Hugo Chavez 'fighting for his life'

VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez is fighting for his life in a Caracas military hospital 10 days after returning from cancer treatment in Cuba.

Hugo Chavez in hospital

VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez is fighting for his life in a Caracas military hospital 10 days after returning from cancer treatment in Cuba.

Vice-President Nicolas Maduro did not provide more details, but the government last week said Mr Chavez was still suffering from a respiratory infection and the prognosis was not favourable.

As he presented subsidised homes on state-run television, Mr Maduro said Mr Chavez was "battling for his health, for his life, and we are accompanying him", adding later that the President was in a "complex and difficult" stage.

Mr Chavez's chosen successor and other officials have used similar phrases to describe the leftist leader's condition in recent weeks.

"Do you know why he neglected his health?" the Vice-President asked. "Because he gave his body and soul completely, and forgot all his obligations to himself, to give the people a fatherland, to give those who had nothing a job, a life, a house, health, food, education."

Mr Chavez has not spoken or appeared in public since undergoing a fourth round of cancer surgery in Cuba on December 11.

He spent two months in Havana before returning to Venezuela in the dead of night on February 18.

The government insists Mr Chavez is still in charge, giving orders from his sickbed by writing because a tracheal tube hinders his speech.

He was diagnosed with cancer in the pelvic region in June 2011. He underwent four rounds of surgery in 18 months, as well as chemotherapy. Officials have provided virtually no details on the type, location or severity of the disease.

The firebrand leader, whose nation sits atop the world's biggest proven oil reserves, had declared himself cancer-free last year and was re-elected to a six-year term in October.

But he announced in December that he needed to return to Cuba because the cancer had returned.