Argentine President Cristina Kirchner on Wednesday thanked her Latin American peers for their support in her first public appearance since she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.
“I am going to continue working with the greatest commitment,” she said as she met the country’s governors at her presidential palace one day after her spokesman announced that she would have surgery next week.
She said Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has himself waged a successful battle against cancer, was the first regional leader to call her to offer his support.
The presidents of Brazil, Paraguay and Chile also called Kirchner, who earlier this month was sworn in for her second term after a resounding election victory.
Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff, who has recovered from lymphatic cancer, wished Kirchner good luck for her upcoming surgery.
The Brazilian leader told the 58-year-old Kirchner “she was sure she would have the necessary strength to face this difficult moment,” her office in Brasilia said.
The 64-year-old Rousseff, who will mark her first year in office Sunday, announced last year that she had fully recovered from lymphatic cancer for which she was treated in 2009. She undergoes routine checkups every six months.
Paraguay’s cancer-stricken President Fernando Lugo said Kirchner told him that she was “very well”.
Lugo, 60, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma last year and has undergone treatment in Brazil.
Chilean President Sebastian Pinera reported after his own telephone conversation with Kirchner that she said the cancer was “moderate”, according to a source in his office.
Kirchner, Argentina’s first elected female president, was found to have thyroid cancer during a routine medical examination on December 22, two months after being reelected in a landslide vote, according to her spokesman.
Former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was diagnosed with throat cancer in late October and underwent chemotherapy treatment.
Doctors said Lula will undergo weeks of radiation therapy early next year to “completely eliminate the cancer.”
Cortesia de: YahooNews.Com
