BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia, who has been undergoing treatment at Evercare Hospital in Dhaka, was again taken back to a cabin on Tuesday afternoon from the Coronary Care Unit (CCU) after her stay there for about nine hours.
“Our leader Begum Khaleda Zia is very sick. Doctors have been saying repeatedly that she is very sick. She had to be taken to the CCU last night. Then she was taken back to a cabin around 12pm," said BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir.
Speaking at a press conference at the BNP Chairperson’s Gulshan office, Fakhrul said he talked to Khaleda’s doctors about her health condition in the morning. “They (doctors) said Madam is now in a very alarming situation.”
The BNP chairperson has been undergoing treatment at the hospital since August 9 for various health complications.
Khaleda Zia's personal physician Dr AZM Zahid Hossain said the BNP chief was shifted to CCU at around 3:30am as her condition worsened.
He said a medical board, headed by cardiologist Prof Shahabuddin Talukder, has been closely monitoring Khaleda’s treatment and her physical condition.
Earlier, the BNP chairperson was taken to CCU several times while undergoing treatment at that hospital.
The 78-year-old former prime minister has been suffering from various ailments, including liver cirrhosis, arthritis, diabetes, kidney, lung, heart, and eye problems.
On September 5, Khaleda’s brother Shamim Iskandar submitted an application to the government, seeking her unconditional release and permission to take her abroad for treatment at an “advanced medical centre” on an urgent basis to save her life.
However, the law ministry denied permission to take her abroad for better treatment, suggesting that she must first return to jail to serve her graft sentence and then apply to the court to get permission in this regard.
On October 9, the BNP chief’s medical board at Evercare Hospital recommended that she be urgently sent to a multidisciplinary centre abroad soon as there are now no treatment options available for her in Bangladesh.
Speaking at a press conference at the hospital, the board also said the former prime minister’s life is at risk because of a lack of proper treatment to stop water accretion in her stomach and chest, internal bleeding and infections caused by her liver cirrhosis problem.
Khaleda was sent to the Old Dhaka Jail after a lower court sentenced her to five years' imprisonment in the Zia Orphanage Trust corruption case on February 8, 2018. Later, she was found guilty in another corruption case the same year.
Amid the coronavirus outbreak, the government temporarily freed Khaleda Zia from jail through an executive order suspending her sentence on March 25, 2020, with the condition that she must stay in her Gulshan house and will not leave the country.
