File photo of Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has been diagnosed with prostate cancer but is expected to recover fully after surgery, his office said today.
Lee "has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and will undergo surgery to remove his prostate gland on Monday 16 February 2015," the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement.
It said Lee, who turned 63 on February 10, would be on "medical leave for one week" during which Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean would be acting prime minister.
Last month Lee, son of Singapore's founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, had undergone a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the prostate which showed "suspicious lesions", the statement added.
"A subsequent biopsy found that one out of 38 samples contained cancer cells," it said.