Ailing Chavez fighting for life, vice-president says
Vice-president says Venezuelan leader may not survive infection in wake of cancer treatment
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is fighting for his life in a Caracas military hospital 10 days after returning from cancer treatment in Cuba, his vice-president said.
Vice-President Nicolas Maduro did not provide more details, but the government said last week that Chavez was still suffering from a respiratory infection and the outcome was not favourable.
As he presented subsidised homes on state-run television, Maduro said on Thursday that Chavez was "battling for his health, for his life, and we are accompanying him", adding later that the president was in a "complex and difficult" stage.
"Do you know why he neglected his health?" the vice-president asked. "Because he gave his body and soul completely and forgot all his obligations to himself to give the people a fatherland, to give those who had nothing a job, a life, a house, health, food, education."
Do you know why he neglected his health? Because he gave his body and soul completely and forgot all his obligations to himself to give the people a fatherland
Chavez, the flamboyant standard-bearer of the Latin American left for more than a decade, has not spoken or appeared in public since undergoing a fourth round of cancer surgery in Cuba on December 11.