I will beat cancer again, Chavez tells VP

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is upbeat about recovering from cancer and confident he will beat it again, the Venezuelan vice president says.

“He (Chavez) told us with great strength: ‘I am very optimistic, I trust completely in the treatments I am undergoing, I will beat this again. I’m holding onto Christ and life,’” Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro said on Tuesday in a speech in Sabaneta, the village where Chavez was born.

The Venezuelan vice president visited Chavez in the Cuban capital Havana last week.

The 58-year-old Venezuelan president traveled to Havana on December 10, 2012 for a fourth operation after his cancer reappeared, despite a year and a half of treatment.

In late March 2012, Chavez began radiation treatment in Cuba after an operation in February 2012 that removed a second cancerous tumor from his pelvic region. Chavez’s first tumor, which was baseball-sized, was removed in June 2011, and then he received chemotherapy.

“Our commander-president is in a tough and complex battle, but with a phenomenal spirit,” Maduro said of Chavez, who came to power in 1999 and was reelected to a new six-year term in October 2012.

On January 26, Venezuelan Communications Minister Ernesto Villegas said that Chavez had recovered from a respiratory infection that he had been battling since his latest cancer surgery.

“The respiratory infection has been overcome, though there still is some degree of breathing difficulty that is being treated appropriately,” Villegas added.

He went on to say that “forty-five days after surgery to remove a malignant tumor in the pelvis” Chavez’s condition is “favorable.”

“Comandante Chavez has fully completed the medical treatment and has always been active in the recovery process which is continuing,” he said.