Football: ‘Abidal improving after transplant’

BARCELONA: Barcelona’s French defender Eric Abidal is ‘improving’ in hospital, said the club’s president Sandro Rosell a day after the player underwent a liver transplant operation.” Abidal and his cousin are improving although I can’t give more information at the request of the family,” Rosell told reporters. The 32-year-old player received part of his cousin Gerard’s liver at a Barcelona hospital in a lengthy procedure reportedly lasting nine hours. Barcelona’s deputy financial director Javier Faus said the length of the surgery was because the player was receiving a partial organ transplant from a living donor.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 12^th, 2012.