BRAZIL President Jair Bolsonaro said today he had been cleared to leave the hospital after being treated for an intestinal blockage.

“Authorised to leave now. Thanks to everyone,” the 66-year-old president tweeted along with a photo of himself surrounded by his doctors at the Sao Paolo hospital where he was admitted on Monday.

Bolsonaro developed abdominal pain during a New Year’s beach vacation in the southern state of Santa Catarina, and was taken to a Sao Paulo hospital early Monday aboard the presidential jet.

Doctors said yesterday that his partial intestinal blockage had been eliminated, and that he was making “satisfactory progress” with no need for surgery.

It was the latest in a series of health problems since the far-right leader was stabbed in the abdomen during the 2018 election campaign that brought him to power. 

With elections nine months off, Bolsonaro on Monday tweeted a picture of himself flashing a thumbs-up from his hospital bed, his face fitted with a nasogastric tube.

Bolsonaro, who is deft at using social media to fire up his base, kept up his online presence with posts to Facebook about a dam project in the northeastern state of Ceara and to Twitter about an increased exemption on import fees for scientific equipment.

The president was last hospitalised in July, for another intestinal obstruction that gave him persistent hiccups.

On that occasion, he spent four days in the hospital. Doctors also decided not to operate and prescribed a liquid diet.

He has undergone at least four surgeries stemming from his stabbing at a campaign rally in September 2018, perpetrated by a man who claimed he was following God’s orders, and who was later ruled mentally unfit to stand trial.

Bolsonaro regularly tears up when speaking about the knife attack, which nearly cost him his life. – AFP, January 5, 2022.