Writer Rubem Alves' health worsens.

Flávia Albuquerque – Reporter for Agência Brasil

The writer and educator Rubem Alves, 80, remains hospitalized at the Centro Médico Hospital in Campinas, in the interior of São Paulo. He was admitted on the 10th of this month with pneumonia.

According to a medical bulletin released earlier this afternoon (18), the writer is experiencing a worsening of renal and pulmonary functions. He is being treated by intensivist and cardiologist Roberto Munimis.

The writer's daughter, Raquel Alves, wrote on his social media page that she would not comment on the family's grief. Raquel said she prefers to transform the pain of seeing her father so ill into love and gratitude for the wonderful man and father he is. "It would be unfair to think of him with pain. A person who only has beauty in his eyes and love in his heart – all the time – pure soul... I sincerely want, above all, the people who love him to wish him the best, regardless of what that means."

Rubem Alves was born in Boa Esperança, in southern Minas Gerais, on September 15, 1933, and currently lives in Campinas, where he maintains an institute to promote social inclusion through education. The Rubem Alves Institute also provides assistance to educators.

In addition to being a writer and educator, Rubem Alves is a poet, philosopher, columnist, storyteller, essayist, theologian, academic, lecturer, author of children's books, and psychoanalyst. He is considered one of the leading figures in educational thought and has a bibliography that includes more than 160 titles distributed in 12 countries.