Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro spent two days in hospital because of a shrimp he swallowed but didn’t chew, he and his doctor said. Bolsonaro was stabbed in the abdomen in 2018.
On January 6, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was discharged from the hospital, two days after being admitted with intestinal obstruction.
Doctors inserted a nasogastric tube and considered surgery, but the obstruction was cleared on Tuesday. Jair Bolsonaro was doing well on a liquid diet and doctors eventually removed the nasogastric tube.
President’s doctor, Antonio Macedo, told reporters he is ready to work, adding that he will be on a special diet during the weekend and will not be able to perform vigorous physical activities.
“The fish stew had some shrimp. I ate the fish and swallowed the shrimp”, told Bolsonaro in front of cameras smiling. The doctor confirmed that “the shrimp was not chewed” before adding that he advises chewing at least 15 times each bite.
He had started feeling unwell on Sunday after lunch, noting it was his second hospitalization “with the same symptoms” in a few months. In July 2021, he was taken to the same hospital for an intestinal blockage after suffering chronic hiccups.
Jair Bolsonaro knifed during his campaign in 2018
The shrimp episode is Bolsonaro’s latest health complication from a 2018 stabbing. The president has undergone a series of emergency surgeries since being knifed during a campaign event in September 2018.
He was vacationing in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina when he was urgently taken to a Sao Paulo hospital in the early hours of Monday after suffering from abdominal pain.
Bolsonaro, who has been in power since 2019 and plans to stand for re-election in a presidential vote scheduled for October, said he will maintain his regular agenda.
According to Bolsonaro’s doctor, who has been following him since the stabbing, the president could experience a new gut obstruction in the future.
