Staff Reporter :
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leaders have demanded of the government to send their party chief Begum Khaleda Zia abroad for taking better treatment.
Earlier, the angiogram performed in the former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s heart revealed 95 percent blockage in an artery that was soon opened by stenting.
Meanwhile, the BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said that although the current government is unelected, their party would like to urge them again to take measures for her treatment abroad to save her life.
“Otherwise, we say again, if anything happens (to her), this government will have to bear all the responsibilities,” he said during a press conference at BNP’s Gulshan office in the city on Saturday.
BNP chairperson’s personal physician AZM Zahid Hossain said that Khaleda Zia’s angiogram was performed and several blockages were found in her heart. The artery with 95 percent blockage was opened by placing a stent. Her condition was not stable, he added.
Earlier, Professor AZM Zahid Hossain had said that Khaleda Zia had suffered an acute coronary heart attack.
After observing that, the medical board decided to perform angiogram on Khaleda’s heart very quickly.
At the same time, the medical board had asked her family members to send her abroad for better treatment, Dr Zahid said.
Earlier, Khaleda Zia was brought to Evercare Hospitals in the capital late on Friday night with chest pain.
Khaleda Zia was admitted to CCU in Evercare Hospitals at 3:20 am on Saturday and was under the supervision of Shahabuddin Talukder.
The BNP chairperson last went to Evercare on April 6 for health check-ups.
Khaleda, a three times former prime minister of Bangladesh, has been suffering from various ailments, including liver cirrhosis, arthritis, diabetes, kidney, lung and eye problems.
The 76-year-old was last admitted to Evercare on November 13 last year where she was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis.
On February 1, Khaleda returned home after an 81-day stay at the hospital as she was suffering from internal bleeding caused by liver cirrhosis.
The former prime minister was sent to the Old Dhaka Central Jail as 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 Covid-19 pandemic, the government temporarily freed Khaleda from jail through an executive order suspending her sentence on March 25, 2020, with conditions that she will stay at her Gulshan home and not leave the country.
