WARSAW, Poland (AP) – Lech Walesa, Poland’s 80-year-old former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner, said Thursday that he is improving after being hospitalized with COVID-19.
A post on Walesa´s Facebook page shows him lying on a hospital bed with his thumbs raised and a brief caption saying he believes he is going to pull through once again.
The former anti-communist dissident has faced multiple health scares in past years. He has diabetes and a heart condition that requires him to use a pacemaker.
Two days earlier, a photo posted on Facebook showed him on a hospital bed with an oxygen mask on, with a caption saying “I have been hit by Covid.” His aide, Marek Kaczmar, told Polish media then that Walesa was seriously ill but was receiving good care in a hospital in Gdansk, the Baltic port city where he lives.
It´s Walesa´s second bout of COVID-19.
Starting in 1980, Walesa spearheaded Poland´s pro-democracy Solidarity movement that nine years later led to the peaceful ouster of communism from Poland and inspired other countries to shed Moscow´s domination.
In 1983 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1990-95 he served as democratic Poland´s first popularly elected president.
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