Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang, the country’s No. 2 after the ruling Communist Party’s leader, died Friday after a serious illness, the government said. He was 61.
Quang passed away despite “utmost efforts to treat him by Vietnamese and foreign professors and doctors and care by the party and state leaders,” the statement said. It said Quang died at a military hospital in Hanoi but did not elaborate on his illness.
The state-run online newspaper VnExpress quoted a former health minister and the head of a national committee in charge of leaders’ health, Nguyen Quoc Trieu, as saying that Quang had contracted a rare and toxic virus since July last year and had traveled to Japan six times for treatment. He did not specify the virus.
Trieu said the president lapsed into a deep coma hours after being admitted to the National Military Hospital 108 on Thursday afternoon.
“Japanese professors and doctors treated him and helped consolidate the president’s health for about a year,” Trieu said. “However, there are no medicines in the world that can cure the illness completely, instead it only could prevent and push it back for some time.”
Quang hosted President Donald Trump during his first state visit to the communist country last year, when Trump attended a summit of Pacific Rim leaders.
U.S Ambassador Daniel Kritenbrink praised Quang for his contributions to promote relations between the two former foes.
“His hosting of President Donald J. Trump’s historic state visit to Hanoi in November 2017 helped advance the U.S.-Vietnam Comprehensive Partnership to new heights on the basis of mutual understanding, shared interests, and a common desire to promote peace, cooperation, prosperity, and security in the Indo-Pacific region,” he said in a statement posted on the embassy’s website. (THE WASHINGTON POST)