Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez has been diagnosed with a respiratory infection after undergoing cancer surgery in Cuba but his condition is stable, the Venezuelan government said.
“The general condition of the commander-president is stable after he was diagnosed with a respiratory infection and the medical team treated him immediately,” Information Minister Ernesto Villegas said on television, reading a government statement. “It has been controlled,” Villegas said. “In the opinion of the doctors, this type of ailment is one of the consequences that appear with the greatest frequency in patients who have undergone complicated surgeries.” Villegas said Venezuela’s socialist leader, who has ruled the South American OPEC nation for 14 years, had been ordered to take “complete rest” and follow medical instructions strictly.
Experts agree that it is hard to predict what Chavez’s likely scenario might be given the available information. “If it’s not a pneumonia … it can be resolved in 48 hours with the proper antibiotics,” said Dr. Maria Crista de Blanco, an internist at the University Hospital of Caracas.
Dr. Carlos Castro, scientific director of the Colombian League Against Cancer in Bogota, said that because Chavez had gone through chemotherapy and had probably been taking steroids, his immune system was weakened and complications of various sorts might be more likely. “That he’s stable doesn’t mean that he’s completely been cured of the infection,” Castro told the AP in a phone interview. “I don’t think he’s out of danger.
