MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uruguayan president confident he is overcoming lung cancer

President Tabare Vazquez on Election day after casting his vote

Uruguayan president Tabare Vazquez clinical studies of the oncologic treatment he is undergoing “are satisfactory with no current evidence of the illness. He will continue with periodic controls, keeping to his normal activities in government”

That is the brief report on president Vazquez medical situation, according to doctors Mauricio Cuello and Mario Zalarayán who are looking after him.

Four months have gone since Vazquez, himself an oncologist, publicly announced he had been detected with a malign nodule in the right lung, during a routine tomography study. So starting September he has been undergoing radio surgery treatment, by which high precision radiations is targeted on the nodule.

The head of Uruguay's National Cancer Institute Alvaro Luongo said that patient Vazquez “has had an excellent oncologic reply” and there is “an absolute control of the illness”, and in other words, “there is no visualized illness”

On election day last October president Vazquez after casting his vote met the media and said he was in good health and feeling well. “Tomorrow is today, and I have great hopes that it will be another, and another...and another”.

“I am hopeful and wish I will be able to hand the presidential sash to the next president of the Republic, in March”, Vazquez said adding that in this opportunity he wished to send a message to the people regarding cancer. “I must insist that cancer nowadays is one of the illness that is most curable. We must not dramatize about this illness, we must work to prevent it and in doubt, visit your doctor”.

In Uruguay according to official data confirmed by WHO, some 1.300 new cases of lung cancer are diagnosed every year, and some 1,200 patients die of the illness.