PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte blamed a “terrible headache” as reason for him to skip two events in Eastern Visayas on Thursday.
The 71-year-old Duterte explained in his speech before troops at the Eastern Mindanao Command headquarters in Camp Panacan, Davao City that his headache “was caused by his misaligned spine” as a result of a motorcycle accident four years ago.
“I was supposed [to appear] yesterday, but I had this spinal thing, uh, going crazy again, and a migraine… I vomitted in the morning so I said I could not make it,” Duterte said.
“I had this terrible headache because of the misaligned spine when I met an accident when I was already 67-years-old in a motorcycle spill,” he added.
The President was supposed to visit the wake of PO1 Gary Cabaguing, a policeman killed in an anti-drug operation in Samar, and the other policemen and soldiers who were wounded in the performance of their duties in Tacloban City later that day.
Duterte maintained that he would still go to places where there is a military man or a policeman who dies in the line of duty.
“That’s the only thing that I can give, to honor them. My presence and to be there and to give them a snappy salute, for dying for their country,” he said.
Duterte, the oldest candidate to win the presidency, has previously admitted that he has Buerger’s disease and Barrett’s esophagus.
Buerger’s disease, associated with smoking, causes inflammation and thrombosis in small and medium-sized blood vessels, usually in the legs and the gangrene.
Barrett’s esophagus, meanwhile, is a complication in the lining of the esophagus, usually due to chronic severe gastrointestinal reflux disease.
Shortly after winning the presidency, Duterte admitted contracting a bronchial infection during the campaign.
Last year, rumors that Duterte has throat cancer circulated after a journalist posted on his Facebook account that a reliable source told him Duterte was suffering from the fatal disease.
