Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva who cancelled his visit to Russia for the BRICS summit after a fall at home, has said that the head injury is “serious”.
According to Lula’s official agenda, he is however expected to speak by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday morning.
Following the injury over the weekend, Lula followed medical advice to long-haul flights and cancelled his visit to Kazan for the BRICS summit.
Lula is in “close contact” with Foreign Relations Minister Mauro Vieira, who is now representing him at the BRICS summit.
The Brazilian President said 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.
“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 that 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.”
(With inputs from Reuters)
