Brazil’s Bolsonaro was admitted to a military hospital on Monday night for tests. (file)
Brasilia:
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Tuesday he was “battle ready” after being discharged from the hospital where he spent the night after falling ill.
The 67-year-old former army captain maintained his pre-set agenda as he traveled from Brasilia to Mato Grosso do Sul state in the mid-west for the official ceremony.
“I just had a bad night,” said the far-right president, who is up for re-election in October.
“I am ready for war,” he said in a video posted on Twitter by his communications minister, who had earlier announced Bolsonaro’s release from the hospital, adding that the president was “doing very well.”
The presidential office did not respond to AFP’s requests for details of the incident.
The newspaper Globo reported that this was due to a “problem in transporting food from the stomach to the intestines”.
Bolsonaro has been having recurring health problems since he was stabbed in the stomach during his 2018 presidential campaign.
He was admitted to a military hospital on Monday night for testing, recalling a planned appearance at an event organized by Brazil’s Republican Party, which is affiliated with him.
It was the latest health scare for the president since September 2018, when an assailant stabbed then-candidate Bolsonaro in the stomach at a campaign rally in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais.
Bolsonaro lost nearly 40 percent of his blood and underwent emergency surgery after a near-fatal attack, which was later disqualified by a man mentally unfit for testing.
Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, Bolsonaro’s son, tweeted late Monday: “The results of the assassination attempt… continue to cause my father’s health problems.”
He asked supporters to pray for the president, “but evil never wins against good and will never win.”
health problems
Bolsonaro has had at least four surgeries since his stabbing, including placing and later removing the colostomy bag, which put him at risk of developing intestinal disorders.
He has also undergone other unrelated procedures during his presidency, including surgery to remove bladder stones.
In January, Bolsonaro was hospitalized for two days in So Paulo with a partially blocked bowel. His doctor said the problem was a shrimp that the president swallowed without chewing – a diagnosis that pleased political cartoonists.
Bolsonaro, who took office in 2019, was also hospitalized in mid-July for four days with a similar condition after experiencing a severe case of hiccups that lasted for several days.
Bolsonaro, a Covid-19 skeptic, also contracted the virus in July 2020 with mild symptoms.
The president, who often clashes with expert advice on handling the pandemic, is not vaccinated against Covid-19, and has joked that the shot “could turn you into a crocodile.”
Bolsonaro is currently trailing his potential rival in October’s elections, leftist former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – although the incumbent has narrowed the gap slightly in recent weeks.
His popularity has declined as his government struggles to contain the pandemic and revive an economy hit by high inflation.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)