SPYROS Kyprianou was yesterday facing treatment for bone-cancer in his pelvis with a smile on his face, making his doctors more hopeful of an eventual full recovery.
It was announced on Wednesday that the 68-year-old former President, one of the island’s best-known public figures, had been diagnosed with malignant cancer earlier this month, and had already begun a course of radiotherapy treatment.
“Mr Kyprianou is facing the whole situation with a smile, with great strength, and people who face illness with such an attitude usually do better,” Dr Adamos Adamou, of the Bank of Cyprus Oncology Centre said yesterday.
Former DIKO leader Kyprianou began radiotherapy treatment at the centre on Wednesday and underwent more again yesterday morning. Kyprianou’s successor at DIKO, Tassos Papadopoulos, who visited the former President at his home at around midday, concurred with the medics about Kyprianou’s state of mind. Papadopoulos said Kyprianou was showing a “desire to fight” and “excellent attitude”.
Kyprianou’s doctors said the pelvic cancer was a secondary condition and they would be carrying out further tests to try to determine the source of the bone cancer. “We will find the original source and then will move to systemic treatment and not just the topical treatment being given at the moment,” Dr Adamou said.
The doctor added that, at the present time, there was no need for Kyprianou to go abroad for treatment.
Kyprianou has a history of poor health. In January last year, he underwent open-heart surgery in Ohio.
When he stepped down as House of Representatives president earlier this year, Kyprianou drew the curtain on a 40-year political career that included a decade as President, between 1978 to 1988, and 12 years as Foreign Minister before that.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
