Venezuela’s ailing President Hugo Chavez has been undergoing “tougher” new treatment for cancer including chemotherapy at the military hospital where he has been for the last two weeks, his vice-president said.

He neglected his own body to give our people his work, his love, his life

Speaking late on Friday after a Catholic Mass to pray for Chavez’s health, Maduro described how the socialist President had personally given the order to leave Cuba in mid-February, two months after his latest cancer surgery there.

“He said ‘I’ve taken the decision to return to Venezuela, I’m going to enter a new phase of complementary treatments, tougher and more intense, I want to be in Caracas,’” Maduro said.

“Do you know what the complementary treatments are? They are the chemotherapies applied to patients after operations,” he added outside a chapel in the Caracas military hospital. Apart from one set of photos showing Chavez in a Havana hospital bed, he has not been seen nor heard from in public since December 11 surgery in Cuba, his fourth operation since the disease was detected in mid-2011.

Furious at rumours swirling all week that Chavez may have died, Maduro said chemotherapy was only possible because his condition had improved in January after the December operation.

Chavez’s No. 2 urged Venezuelans to be on the guard against “rumour-mongers” and “destabilisers,” saying right-wing politicians in the US were in league with Venezuela’s opposition to spread lies about his boss.

“Sadly, the opposition live in a world of hatred, wrongdoing, bad feelings and bad desires,” Maduro said, adding that Chavez had become sick from over-working.

“He neglected his own body to give our people his work, his love, his life,” Maduro said, confirming Chavez was still using a tracheal tube to breathe and was communicating with family and aides through written messages and other “creative” means.