Tabaré, the oncologist who faces the biggest challenge: fighting his own illness

MONTEVIDEO.- He leads a life dedicated to the eradication of cancer from his patients. He has written a book on how to fight and cure this disease and has fought a fierce battle against tobacco so that smokers lose their vices and avoid lung cancer.

And now,
when there are two months left before the election to define his successor, the president

Tabaré Vázquez

surprised

Uruguay

with an announcement that moved the country: it was "detected a nodule" in his "right lung" with "the characteristics of a perverse process".

Only three weeks after the surprise death of his wife,
A companion for nearly six decades, the president today called on his ministerial cabinet to urgently transmit the news and then made an announcement at a press conference.

Vázquez is one of the country's leading oncologists and his pbadion in fighting this disease has been influenced by the pain caused by the deaths of his parents, his mother and an older sister, all suffering from A cancer.

In 2011, in the interval between his two presidencies, Vázquez published the Chronicle of a Bad Friend, in which he tells the struggle of many of his cancer patients. It is a disease that can be "combated and cured," he said at the presentation of the book on February 5 this year.

In this act, he said one thing he repeated today: that if he was diagnosed with a cancer, he would be treated in Uruguay.

He recalled today that in Uruguay there is "a medical corps of excellence and advanced medical technology" which places the country "among the first countries in the world".

Vice-President Lucia Topolansky, former guerrilla of the Tupamaros movement, wife of former president José Mujica, was present at the meeting. Topolansky is in post after the fall of Raúl Sendic, prosecuted for acts of corruption.

Vázquez said that the symptom appeared during "a routine examination by tomography" and that he will spend in the coming days additional studies to know "the definitive diagnosis", for which he must be admitted.

The head of state, which since the autumn of 1990 has held the first or second place of popularity among political leaders (alternating with Mujica), is 79 years old.

In his message from the House of the Government, he revealed between president, patient and doctor and recommended to the population to carry out periodic studies: "It is good that all the citizens pbad tests to prevent or to advance the diagnosis of the diseases . "he said.