Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is doing “well” after having surgery for a brain bleed, his doctors say.
The 79-year-old was rushed to hospital in Brasília on Monday with a bad headache.
Lula was sent to the renowned Sírio-Libanês hospital in São Paulo after an MRI scan detected a bleed.
The brain haemorrhage was caused by a blow to the head he received when he fell in his bathroom at the presidential house in October, according to a hospital statement.
Doctors said they had performed a craniotomy on the president, a procedure in which part of the bone is surgically removed from the skull to treat the bleed and relieve the pressure. The bone is then replaced.
In a news conference on Tuesday morning local time, the doctors said that the president was in a stable condition following the surgery and was conscious.
They said Lula was “lucid” and conversing with medical staff.
They also insisted that he had not sustained any brain injury and was not experiencing and after-effects from the surgery.
Asked when he would return to the capital, doctors said that if everything went well, they expected Lula to be back in Brasilia “next week”.