ARGENTINA: FOOTBALL / SOCCER - Soccer legend Diego Maradona is reported as improving his health, undergoing detoxification

Record ID: 334899

  • Title: ARGENTINA: FOOTBALL / SOCCER - Soccer legend Diego Maradona is reported as improving his health, undergoing detoxification
  • Date: 28th March 2007
  • Summary: (BN02) BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA (MARCH 30, 2007) (REUTERS) JOURNALISTS CAMPED OUT AT EXTERIOR OF GUEMES HOSPITAL WHERE MARADONA IS VARIOUS OF FAN READING GET WELL MESSAGES THAT HAVE BEEN WRITTEN TO MARADONA. VARIOUS OF MEXICAN CLUB ATLAS SOCCER PLAYERS WRITING MESSAGES ADDRESSED TO MARADONA (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) CARLOS BELLO, MEXICAN CLUB ATLAS PLAYER, SAYING: "To see that he won a World Cup, that alone can't be taken away. And other things that he did like in Europe with Napoli. He's known throughout the world and, thanks to him, you say 'Maradona" and they all know that you're Argentine and, well, it's the most beautiful thing that can happen to a footballer and to any person."
  • Embargoed: 12th April 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Argentina
  • Country: Argentina
  • Topics: Sports
  • Reuters ID: LVA32W6I0RUEJ9F39SME40U2GGUK
  • Story Text: Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona is improving while undergoing detoxification on Friday (March 30) in a Buenos Aires hospital, two days after he was admitted.
    Fans of the former player who led Argentina to a World Cup victory in 1986 posted messages outside the hospital.
    The media are camped outside waiting for news of his condition.
    "We're right in the middle of the recovery period," said Guemes Hospital medical director Doctor Hector Pezzella. "Remember that we always talk of 48 or 72 hours for the most intense recovery of alcoholic detoxification that would be to avoid the adverse affects of the abstinence syndrome. That period is what we're going through. In other words, his evolution, for now, is acceptable."
    The 46-year-old star revered as one of the game's best players has battled obesity and cocaine addiction and Pezzella said he is not fully out of the woods.
    "We spoke about the risks in some statements," he told reporters. "They have to do with some worsening of the chronic hepatopathy that he has or the possibility of pancreatitis. In other words, the risks exist whenever there's an excess like the one Mr. Maradona had."
    Maradona's hospital stay was a reminder of the repeated health problems -- many of them drug-related --- he has faced since retiring from the game in 1997.
    Maradona was suspended for drugs while playing in Italy in 1991 and kicked out of the 1994 World Cup after a dope test -- which he blamed on one of his coaching team buying the wrong medicine off a supermarket shelf.
    In 2000, Maradona was hospitalized with a severe heart problem while on vacation in Uruguay and tested positive for cocaine before undergoing drug rehabilitation in Cuba .
    Four years later, he spent 10 days in intensive care with heart and breathing problems and re-entered rehabilitation.
    A stomach-stapling operation in 2005 helped Maradona shed 66 pounds (30 kg) but recent television images have showed him again overweight and bloated.
    Just days ago, his personal physicial said that Maradona had put on weight and smoked too many cigars, and was planning a trip to Switzerland to get himself back in shape.
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