Kirchner undergoes medical tests after Cuba trip

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – Argentina President Cristina Kirchner checked into hospital for tests Wednesday, immediately after touching down following her first trip abroad since a blood clot.

The president, 60, who had just arrived back in Buenos Aires after attending a regional summit in Cuba, “is undergoing tests… after showing symptoms of sciatica and lower back pain,” her office said in a statement.

Doctors performed surgery on Argentina’s first democratically elected woman president on October 8 to remove a blood clot that had developed after she struck her head during a fall.

She had a month’s rest after surgery and resumed her duties on November 18.

The center-left Kirchner, a lawyer by trade, has angered Argentina’s business class through her failure to control inflation, her protectionist economics, import restrictions, the nationalization of companies such as energy giant YPF, and her foreign exchange controls.

But the poor revere her for her fight against poverty, generous social welfare programs and improved retirement pensions, even though Argentina’s economy is sluggish and violent crime is on the rise.

Argentina is still one of the world’s agricultural powerhouses, producing and exporting massive amounts of soy, wheat and meat.

Kirchner followed her late husband, Nestor Kirchner, as Argentina’s president. Her husband was in office from 2003 to 2007. – Rappler.com