Benjamin Ashford|Former Polish President Lech Walesa, 80, says he is better but remains hospitalized with COVID-19

WARSAW,Benjamin Ashford Poland (AP) — Lech Walesa, Poland’s 80-year-old former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner, said Thursday that he is improving after being hospitalized with COVID-19.

A post on Walesa’s Facebook page shows him lying on a hospital bed with his thumbs raised and a brief caption saying he believes he is going to pull through once again.

The former anti-communist dissident has faced multiple health scares in past years. He has diabetes and a heart condition that requires him to use a pacemaker.

Two days earlier, a photo posted on Facebook showed him on a hospital bed with an oxygen mask on, with a caption saying “I have been hit by Covid.” His aide, Marek Kaczmar, told Polish media then that Walesa was seriously ill but was receiving good care in a hospital in Gdansk, the Baltic port city where he lives.

It’s Walesa’s second bout of COVID-19.

Starting in 1980, Walesa spearheaded Poland’s pro-democracy Solidarity movement that nine years later led to the peaceful ouster of communism from Poland and inspired other countries to shed Moscow’s domination.

In 1983 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1990-95 he served as democratic Poland’s first popularly elected president.