Brazil’s Lula undergoes surgery for brain hemorrhage

Brazil’s 79-year-old President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva underwent surgery for a brain hemorrhage related to a recent fall, hospital officials said Tuesday.

“The operation went without complications” on Monday night, and Lula was “doing well, under monitoring” in an intensive care unit, the Syrian-Lebanese Hospital in São Paulo said in a statement posted on the president’s Instagram account.

The hemorrhage was linked to a fall Lula suffered on October 19, the hospital said. Lula had hit his head after falling in a bathroom at the presidential residence in the capital Brasilia and received several stitches.

He was admitted to the hospital’s branch in Brasília on Monday “to undergo an imaging exam after experiencing a headache”, the hospital said. The exam found an intracranial hemorrhage.

He was then “transferred to the São Paulo unit of the Syrian-Lebanese hospital, where he underwent a craniotomy to drain the hematoma.”

A medical team was scheduled to hold a news conference on Tuesday to provide an update.

– ‘It was serious’ –

Lula canceled a planned trip to Russia for a BRICS summit on medical advice following his fall, instead joining the meeting online.

He also failed to attend the United Nations COP29 climate summit in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, as planned.

Lula described his accident as “serious” at the time, during a telephone call with an official from his Workers’ Party that was shared on social media.

“I am fine, I had an accident, but it was my fault. It was serious but it did not affect any sensitive area,” Lula said in the call.

“I’m taking care of myself… The doctors said I had to wait at least three or four days to find out how much damage the blow had done,” Lula said.

Since then, the Brazilian leader has maintained a busy schedule, including last month hosting the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Brasilia.

Lula has frequently talked about his good health and has said he wants to “live to 120.”

– ‘Willing to run again’ –

But the Brazilian leader has faced other health issues in the past.

Lula underwent a successful hip operation in September 2023, which he hoped would put an end to pain that had become unbearable and put him “in a bad mood”.

He was also diagnosed with throat cancer in 2011, from which he recovered the following year after undergoing radiotherapy and chemotherapy.

Lula, who led the country from 2003 to 2010, won another term in office when he defeated then far-right president Jair Bolsonaro in the October 2022 elections after a hard-fought campaign.

He has not said whether he will run again in the 2026 elections, telling CNN last month that “I’m going to think about 2026 in 2026.”

“It’s not the youth that’s going to solve the world governance problems. What’s going to solve the world governance problem is the competence of the ruler, the mindset of the ruler, the health of those,” Lula said.

“I will be willing to run again. But I hope it won’t be necessary. And I hope that we’ll have other candidates and so that we can have great political renovation in the country and in the world,” he added.