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Brazil’s Bolsonaro is released from hospital after two-day stay

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro waving
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro waves to supporters as he leaves a hospital in Sao Paulo on Wednesday.
(Marcelo Chello / Associated Press)
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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was discharged from a hospital Wednesday morning in Sao Paulo after two days spent there owing to an intestinal obstruction.

The hospital stay forced Bolsonaro to cut short his vacation. On Tuesday, the medical team accompanying him had ruled out the need for surgery.

Bolsonaro, 66, has undergone four surgeries stemming from a stabbing in the abdomen that he suffered during a 2018 campaign event.

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“We instruct patients to chew well, avoid some foods, and we hope to keep the president like that for the next 20, 30 years,” Antonio Luiz Macedo, Bolsonaro’s doctor, told reporters in the hospital lobby before the president’s departure for the airport.

Ten months before the next presidential election, Brazil is more polarized than at any point in recent memory.

Macedo, who has attended Bolsonaro since the 2018 attack, also recommended that he avoid intensive physical activity this week.

Bolsonaro joked about the difficulty of the restrictions.

“I’ll try to follow them, but life goes on,” he said. “My whole life I was an athlete, in the armed forces, a paratrooper, diver. It’s hard to stay still.”

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