AP News, April 21st, 2007
Diego Maradona was transferred Saturday to a private psychiatric clinic where he is to undergo treatment for alcohol addiction after being hospitalized twice in less than a month.
Alfredo Cahe, personal physician to the Argentine soccer hero, said the 46-year-old elected treatment at the private Avril Clinic in Buenos Aires that specializes in dependency treatment.
"He himself decided on this choice ... to enter the clinic," Cahe said on the Argentine broadcast network Todo Noticias.
Maradona led Argentina to the 1986 World Cup title and is the country's most revered soccer player and considered one of the greats of the sport alongside Brazil's Pele. He has battled obesity and cocaine addiction since his 1997 retirement.
His legion of fans watched anxiously after Maradona was admitted March 28 to one private clinic, the Guemes Sanatorium, for a 13-day stay for treatment of a hepatitis condition Cahe said was caused by excessive drinking.
Strong abdominal pains blamed on a relapse of the hepatitis condition forced Maradona to undergo another eight-day stay at a second clinic, Los Arcos, which he left Saturday.
During the hospitalizations, Maradona's condition was closely watched by the public and the clinics released near-daily statements on his health.
But Cahe said neither he nor the Avril Clinic would not discuss Maradona's treatment there.
"The clinic will release no information whatsoever about his treatment," Cahe said, adding that Maradona also will not receive visitors in the first days of his treatment.
"Not even I will be going to see him there," he said, without saying how long treatment might last.
Two days earlier, Cahe had told Argentina's Radio Uno that Maradona had become aware during his latest hospitalizations of the health problems caused by excessive alcohol.
"He didn't have any idea where alcohol was taking him," Cahe added.
Hospitalized near death in 2000 and again in 2004 for heart problems blamed on cocaine, Maradona later said he overcame the drug problem.
Despite a gastric bypass operation in 2005 that greatly reduced his weight, Cahe said last month that Maradona had been gaining weight. He also said when Maradona was hospitalized March 28 that excessive drinking, eating and smoking on the Buenos Aires social circuit were to blame for his latest woes.
