CARACAS: A doctor who said in an interview that President Hugo Chavez has only two years of life because of the type of cancer he is suffering wrote in a letter Friday that he has fled Venezuela.
The Mexican magazine Milenio ran a story Monday interviewing Salvador Navarrete, a Venezuelan doctor who said he was part of Chavez's medical team up to 2002.
"The information that I have from the (Chavez) family is that he has a sarcoma, a (very aggressive) tumor, and I am almost certain that that is true," Navarrete told Milenio.
The life expectancy of people with a sarcoma tumor is no more than two years, Navarrete said.
Chavez had a tumor extracted from his pelvic area in June in Havana, and has undergone four rounds of chemotherapy. On Thursday he declared himself cancer-free, but few details of his disease have been made public.
On Friday the leftist opposition daily Tal Cual ran a letter signed by Navarrete stating that "events that followed" his interview with Milenio "obliged" him to leave Venezuela with his family "in an abrupt way."
The doctor did not give details of the "events."
Navarrete wrote that all he did in the Milenio interview was give the opinion "that any medical professional can give" regarding Chavez's health, without being final.
Navarrete however reiterated that Chavez was gravely ill. "I am concerned that the president and his political entourage do not know the magnitude of his illness because it has been handled with complete secrecy," he wrote.
Chavez, 57 and in power since 1999, has maintained that he will recover in time to win reelection in 2012.
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