BRASILIA (Reuters) -Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the head injury he suffered from a fall at home over the weekend was “serious” and that doctors expect to have a clear view on its severity in three or four days, according to a phone call published by an ally on Monday.
The president’s injury forced him to cancel a trip to Russia for a summit of the BRICS group of major emerging markets being held in Kazan, following medical advice to temporarily avoid long-haul flights.
“It was serious, but did not affect any particularly sensitive area,” Lula told ally Luiz Caetano in a phone call.
Caetano, who is running for mayor of the northeastern city of Camacari in the runoff of Brazilian municipal elections next weekend, shared a video with clips of the call with Lula on social media.
These were the first publicly shared remarks from Lula since his injury.
A source from Brazil’s government told Reuters Lula was not aware the conversation about his injury would be released on social media. The presidential palace declined to comment on the video.
Lula’s fall at home on Saturday caused “great” trauma to the back of his head, requiring stitches for the injury and resulting in a “small brain hemorrhage” in the temporal-frontal region, his doctor Roberto Kalil previously said.
Earlier on Monday, Institutional Relations Minister Alexandre Padilha told reporters Lula was doing “super well.”
Lula also shared on social media a picture of himself smiling next to Padilha and his top foreign policy adviser, Celso Amorim, during a meeting on Monday to “discuss the national and international agenda for the coming days.”
Padilha said Lula was in “close contact” with Foreign Relations Minister Mauro Vieira, who is now representing him at the BRICS summit.
Lula is expected to speak by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday morning, according to Lula’s official agenda.
(Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu and Maria Carolina Marcello in Brasilia; writing by Luana Maria Benedito and Andre Romani; Editing by Gabriel Araujo and Bill Berkrot)
