POSTED: 12:51 a.m. EST, January 20, 2007
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (CNN) -- Cuban leader Fidel Castro is "fighting
for his life," Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said in a speech to the
state legislature in Rio de Janeiro.
Chavez, who said he spoke to Castro a few days ago by telephone,
compared Castro's battle against a serious intestinal illness with the
Cuban leader's time in the island's mountains heading the revolution
against the Fulgencio Batista government.
"Fidel is again in the Sierra Maestra again," Chavez said Friday. "He's
fighting for his life. We don't know; we want him to recover, and he
continues progressing, although slowly."
Noting Castro's age, Chavez said that "he said it himself: the machine
that they have to fix is 80 years old."
"He is going through a difficult situation," he said.
Castro has not been seen in public since before July 31, when he
relinquished power to his brother Raul so that he could undergo
intestinal surgery. The Cuban government has maintained secrecy about
his condition.
Earlier this week, the Spanish newspaper El Pais quoted unnamed medical
sources saying Castro was in grave condition. But a Spanish surgeon who
visited Castro in December -- and works at the same hospital as the
sources -- said those reports were based on rumors and that Castro's
condition shows "some progressive improvement."
"The only truthful parts of the newspaper's reports are the name of the
patient, that he has been operated on, and that he has had
complications. The rest is rumors," the surgeon, Dr. Jose Luis Garcia
Sabrido, told CNN in an exclusive interview.
He declined to go into specifics on Castro's health, or to discuss El
Pais' reports point-by-point, but he said they "are not in line with
reality, are not truthful and not real."
El Pais, one of Spain's largest and most reliable papers, reported
Tuesday that two sources at the hospital in Madrid, Spain, told its
reporters that Castro had suffered complications after three failed
surgeries.
El Pais reported that Castro suffered from diverticulitis, an
inflammation of sacs on the large intestine that can rupture and cause
bleeding. The infection spread to the tissue on the walls of the
abdomen, a condition called peritonitis.
The infections, the paper said, have impeded the healing process. On
Wednesday, El Pais reported, citing sources, that Castro himself
personally made a decision to undergo a type of operation that
subsequently went wrong instead of a more routine surgery.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/01/20/castro.condition/
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