Cuba’s Fidel Castro in good health, vice-president says

 

HAVANA (Reuters) – Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro is in good health and working hard though he is “dismayed” over the recent death of his close friend, Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cuba’s government said yesterday.

“His health is very good. He’s working intensely on the things he has been doing recently, and of course he has been very dismayed by the death of Garcia Marquez, who was his close friend,” Vice-President Miguel Diaz-Canel told reporters in Havana.

Castro, 87, last appeared in public in January. He writes occasionally about current events and receives visiting dignitaries at his home, but he has remained publicly silent since the death of Garcia Marquez on April 17.