Poland's former President Lech Walesa, 80, hospitalised with COVID-19

Lech Walesa, Poland's 80-year-old former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner, has been hospitalized with a bad case of COVID-19 on Dec 05, 2023. Archive footage shows Walesa during interview on 21 Feb. 2020 in Gdansk, Poland. Walesa is seriously ill, but under good care in a hospital in Gdansk, the Baltic port city where he lives. 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.