MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Lugo not to abandon term of office in spite of treatment for cancer

The Paraguayan leader begins treatment Tuesday in Sao Paulo

Paraguay’s President Fernando Lugo has a second lymphoma nodule in his chest, doctors assured some days after revealing he had cancer. Sources stated that he is not to abandon his term of office.

Paraguayan Vice-president Federico Franco, with whom Lugo has a tight relationship, was said to have told the Head of State to “remain calm” for he will “fulfil his duties.”

Franco said: “My duty is to the President and to the Paraguayan people that is why I tell Lugo that he may stay calm, for I will comply with my tasks.” Franco, who appears as a rival within the political spectrum, spoke to Paraguayan reporters after he had found out Lugo was suffering from a second nodule in his chest.

Lugo is to travel Tuesday to Sao Paulo, in Brazil, to be treated in Hospital Sirio Libanés hospital. Brazilian President Lula da Silva was quoted as saying that he was to send Lugo a personal airplane for him to travel safe.

Pro-government Senator Alberto Grillón, friend of Lugo, told the press that the President is not to leave his term of office, basing his arguments on the fact that “Lugo's lymphoma is treatable.”

Last week, his doctors said that a biopsy carried out in a gland in his groin had revealed the early stages of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a type of cancer, but that an early diagnosis meant there was a good chance the cancer could be treated successfully.

“He also has a nodule in the mediastinum, which is an area with glands in the chest. It is a lymphoma but it's not that important because this kind of disease starts this way, in several areas” said Alfredo Boccia, a member of the president's medical team.

Boccia told reporters Lugo's diagnosis had not worsened despite having been found to have more than one malignant nodule and that chemotherapy can be used to treat the cancer. Last January President Lugo underwent prostate surgery. Further samples of ganglions are to be sent to the United States for lab checking.

Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is a cancer that originates in the lymphoid tissue that makes up the lymph nodes, spleen and other organs of the immune system, with tumours developing from white blood cells. It is more common in men than women.