French-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt has become so ill that her rebel captors took her to medical facilities in southeastern Colombia last month, the nation's ombudsman said Thursday.
  
The 46-year-old former presidential candidate, who has been held in the jungle for more than six years, was in a "very delicate" state, ombudsman Volmar Perez told radio Caracol.
  
Betancourt is suffering from hepatitis B and leishmania infection, a skin disease caused by insect bites, Perez said, citing "authorities and social" sources he declined to identify.
  
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) took Betancourt to medical facilities in the towns of San Jose and El Retorno in the southeastern jungle department of Guaviare in the second half of February, he said.
  
"The information that we have, at least until February, is that the state of her health is very delicate, and her physical and health conditions have been deteriorating," said Perez, an independent official in charge of relations between the government and the population.
  
Betancourt has become the international face of the hostage crisis in Colombia, where the government says more than 700 people are being held hostage by the FARC.
  
The former senator was kidnapped on February 23, 2002, while she was running for president. The French and Venezuelan government have become deeply involved in efforts to win her release.
  
Concerns about her health began to grow after she appeared gaunt and depressed in a video taped in October and released in November, the last evidence that she was alive.
  
She is among 39 high-profile hostages, including three American defense contractors, whom FARC want to exchange with the government for 500 rebels held in prison, including two held in US prisons.
  
President Alvaro Uribe has indicated that he favors such an exchange, but he has firmly rejected rebel demands that he demilitarize two towns to conduct the swap.
  
Betancourt was treated in the same region where the FARC released six hostages in the past two months through the Venezuelan government's mediation.