Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was in “stable” condition after emergency surgery yesterday for an intracranial haemorrhage and should leave the hospital next week, his doctors said.Lula, 79, was transported overnight to Brazil’s top medical facility, Hospital Sirio-Libanes in Sao Paulo, after experiencing headaches that medics found were related to a fall he suffered in October.The leader of South America’s largest country regained consciousness following the two-hour operation and was eating and talking, the doctors told a news conference.Vice-President Geraldo Alckmin had taken over Lula’s workload in the meantime.“After successful surgery, the anguish of last night has changed to calm and the certainty that, with the dedication of the medical team and faith and the people’s love, he will soon return to work,” Lula’s wife, First Lady Rosangela Janja da Silva, said on Instagram.The bleeding 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.After experiencing a headache on Monday, a medical examination with an MRI scan in Brasilia found the intracranial haemorrhage.Lula was swiftly transported to Hospital Sirio-Libanes, where surgeons performed a trepanation — drilling into the skull to relieve pressure.“The bleeding was between the brain and the dura mater membrane,” a thick protective layer under the skull, and was located on the left side, above the frontal lobe and the parietal lobe, said Marcos Stavale, a doctor on the medical team.Through surgery, “the brain was decompressed and neurological functions were preserved,” he said.“He didn’t have brain damage” from the emergency, added another doctor, Roberto Kalil.Back in October, Lula cancelled a planned trip to Russia for a Brics summit following his fall, instead joining the meeting online. He also skipped a UN COP29 climate summit in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.Lula at the time described his accident as “serious” during a telephone call with an official from his Workers’ Party that was shared on social media.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, and last week attending a summit of the Mercosur bloc in Uruguay.Lula has frequently talked about his good health and has said he wants to “live to 120.”The Brazilian leader has faced other health issues in the past. But just as in politics, the hyperactive leftist — who is half-way through his third term — has bounced back from every misfortune.In 1964, when he was a metalworker in a car parts factory, Lula lost the little finger on his left hand in a workplace accident.Lula, who was 19 at the time, said that a press broke and, when he tried to fix it, his finger was crushed.He went on to become a trade union leader before entering politics.Lula was forced to cancel a trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2010 after being admitted to hospital with alarmingly high blood pressure.He was 64 years old at the time and nearing the end of his second term.Doctors said he was suffering from stress and fatigue after a bout of flu.He was discharged from hospital after a few hours and subsequently quit smoking after fifty years.After leaving power in 2011, at 66, he was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer and underwent chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Doctors announced he had made a full recovery the following year, although his once-booming voice was left with a hoarseness that became a trademark on his campaign trail return.During the 2022 presidential race, which marked his stunning return to power after a year and a half behind bars on corruption charges, some of his opponents questioned his health because of his weak voice.Three weeks after his re-election, he underwent surgery to remove a lesion from his vocal cords.In September 2023, he received a hip replacement to relieve pain that had been bothering him for over a year.Lula suffers from osteoarthritis, or wear and tear on the cartilage that protects joints.The image-conscious president has since published videos of himself doing exercises in the presidential residence.He has not said whether he will run again in 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.
