President Talabani improving hour after hour: Iraqi official

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - The Iraqi president was taken to a hospital in the capital, Baghdad, on the night of December 17.“Thanks be to God, the president is in good condition and he is improving hour after hour,” said Barzan Sheikh Othman, the top media official in Talabani’s office, adding that the president is “receiving treatment and responding to it.”A team of Iranian and German doctors are treating the Iraqi president.On Tuesday, Iraqi authorities denied media reports that Talabani had passed away.The Iraqi president has struggled with health problems in recent years and has often been treated abroad.Talabani underwent heart surgery in the United States in 2008, and a year earlier, he was treated for dehydration and exhaustion in Jordan. He also had spinal surgery in Germany in January 2012.He was elected as Iraq’s first-ever Kurdish president two years after the 2003 ouster of former dictator Saddam Hussein following the US-led invasion of the country. He began his second term in office in 2010. /129