Three events have fueled the rumor that Cuban Communist Party President Fidel Castro is gravely ill — possibly due to stomach cancer. One, no one has seen publicly him since he was hospitalized last week for surgery, and two, for the first time in his dictatorship it was announced Castro has turned over power of Cuba to his brother Raul, who hasn’t been seen in public lately either. Lastly, a Brazilian newspaper published a story stating Castro had stomach cancer.

The speculation about stomach cancer originated in that Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo reporting that a Cuban official told Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva his friend Castro had a malignant stomach tumor and his condition was worse than had been disclosed.

“The information was obtained by Folha from two direct aides to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva,” reporter Kennedy Alencar said in a letter to his newspaper published on Sunday.

The latest statement issued by Vice President Carlos Lage said Castro is recovering well from surgery and will return to the presidency in several weeks. The Brazilian newspaper journalist who reported the story of Castro being treated for stomach cancer is standing by his story.

BOSTON, MA, United States (UPI) — Attacking stomach cancer with anti-cancer drugs before and after surgery can dramatically increase the chances that patients will survive at least five years, researchers reported Wednesday.

In the United States, the standard of care for gastric cancers has been surgery when there is possibility that performing the operation could cure the patient. After the surgeon has finished his work, the patients often receive chemotherapy and/or radiation.

However, in a report to be published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors in the United Kingdom said their patients achieved a 36 percent five-year survival if they underwent the peri-operative chemotherapy schedule — three cycles of anti-cancer drugs before surgery and three cycles after surgery.

That compared to a 23 percent five-year survival for patients with cancers of the stomach, the junction of the stomach and esophagus or lower esophagus, who only received surgical excision of the their tumors.

‘This treatment should be considered as an option for patients with gastric cancer,’ said the study`s lead author David Cunningham, a surgeon at Royal Marsden Hospital, London.

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