Argentine president on 1-month rest after head trauma

Argentina’s President Cristina Kirchner has been ordered to rest for a month after doctors found a brain hemorrhage linked to an August incident, her spokesman said.

Kirchner, 60, “sustained the head injury August 12 and had tests at the time that showed nothing,” spokesman Alfredo Scoccimarro said.

But new tests identified the chronic subdural hematoma, a type of hemorrhage, and “doctors ordered her to rest for a month,” he said in a statement.

Scoccimarro said that Argentina’s first democratically-elected female leader was not ordered to be on total rest.

He did not immediately say how much she would be working, but added that Kirchner would be receiving follow-up treatment.

Kirchner’s spokesman did not indicate whether Vice President Amado Boudou would take over any of her duties during her recover. Boudou, 50, is a former economy minister.

Kirchner has had several health concerns while in office described as cerebrovascular in nature.

In January 2012, less than a month into her second term, she underwent surgery to remove her thyroid gland only to be told that she had been mistakenly diagnosed with cancer.

During her first term in office, Kirchner on several occasions cancelled official appearances and events citing exhaustion.

Her husband, Nestor Kirchner, was a popular two-term president who died of a heart attack in 2010, but saw his wife succeed him as president.

On the domestic front, Cristina Kirchner has presided over rising inflation, a weakening peso and a greater government role in the economy, including unpopular controls on how many dollars people may hold.

Internationally, she has kept up her country’s push for talks at the United Nations on the sovereignty of the British-ruled Falklands, which Buenos Aires claims.

Argentina, which was then ruled by a military junta under General Leopoldo Galtieri, invaded and occupied the islands in April 1982.

This prompted Britain to send a task force of 100 ships to recapture them in a war in which 649 Argentine and 244 British troops died.

In March, Falkland Islanders voted 99.8 percent to remain a British territory. But Argentina rejected the vote as meaningless and Kirchner has repeatedly staked its claim.