The former president of Paraguay Fernando Lugo, 71, was admitted to a private hospital in Asunción after suffering a stroke when he was in his Senate office this Wednesday, his political associates reported.
“Senator Fernando Lugo suffered a stroke of ischemic origin,” said doctor Jorge Querey, who also serves as a senator for his party, the leftist Guasú Front (Frente Grande).
His picture “is stable, but he is connected to a respirator and in an induced coma”, a state in which he will remain until Thursday, Querey said.
“Within the complexity, the situation is controlled. If we don’t have a surprise, the prognosis is good,” he added, while specifying that “the bleeding he had is small thanks to the drugs he takes.”
Lugo, a former bishop, governed Paraguay between 2008 and 2012. Until now, he has been the only president who does not belong to the right-wing Colorado Party since that political force took power in 1954, first under the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner and from 1989 in democracy. .
The former president had returned to Paraguay on Monday “already with symptoms” from Colombia, where he attended the inauguration ceremony of President Gustavo Petro, legislator Esperanza Martínez, who accompanied him on that trip, told the press.
“He is a hypertensive person and was undergoing treatment,” Martínez commented after clarifying that Lugo “is a patient at risk.”
Lugo was removed from the presidency in June 2012, nine months before the presidential elections, through a controversial political trial in Congress, accused of poor performance of his duties.
YS
