Brazil’s far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro, who was stabbed at an election rally in 2018, was rushed to hospital by helicopter on Friday with “severe pain” in his abdomen, a party spokesman said.
Bolsonaro, 70, was at a party event in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte when he started feeling unwell “linked to the 2018 stabbing,” the spokesman told AFP.
He was brought to a local hospital and then flown by helicopter to another, bigger facility in the state capital, Natal.
Bolsonaro has had recurring health problems since September 2018, when an attacker stabbed the then-candidate at a campaign rally in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais.
Bolsonaro lost some 40 percent of his blood and underwent emergency surgery after the near-fatal attack, perpetrated by a man later declared mentally unfit to stand trial.
The former president has undergone at least four surgeries since his stabbing, including the placement and subsequent removal of a colostomy bag, which made him prone to intestinal disorders.
He has also undergone other unrelated procedures during his presidency, including surgery to remove a bladder stone.
Bolsonaro, who is hoping to make a comeback in the 2026 presidential elections despite being barred from running, was set to start a tour of Rio Grande do Norte on Friday.
He has been ordered to stand trial for an alleged coup plot after elections in 2022 that he lost to leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
