Khaleda Zia suffers heart attack, gets stent
BNP Chairperson Brgum Khaleda Zia. — File photo.
Bangladesh desk: Opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party chair Khaleda Zia underwent angiogram and had a stent placed into a coronary artery as 99 per cent blockage was detected inside the artery at the Evercare Hospital in Dhaka.
‘Begum Khaleda Zia has been diagnosed with several blockages in her heart after she suffered from a mild cardiac arrest. One of the blocks has grown 99 per cent. A stent has been placed there,’ BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir told reporters at a press conference at the party chair’s Gulshan office.
He said that after Khaleda was admitted to the hospital with breathing difficulties, physicians immediately took the decision to put a stent into her coronary artery having the 99 per cent blockage.
Khaleda Zia’s medical team has said that her condition can take any turn at any moment, Fakhrul said.
He further said that the medcial board said that giving proper treatment to Khaleda Zia was not possible in the country.
‘If anything happens to Khaleda Zia, the government will have to bear the responsibility,’ he said.
Fakhrul again called upon the government to allow Khaleda Zia to receive medical treatment abroad.
The 76-year-old former prime minister was taken from her Gulshan residence to the Evercare Hospital early Saturday with chest pain and was admitted to the hospital’s coronary care unit for cardiac problems at about 3:00am.
Fakhrul and other party leaders rushed to the hospital after she was taken there.
Earlier, in the day, home minister Asaduzzaman Khan at an event at the Institution of Diploma Engineers, Bangladesh building at Kakrail in the capital said that if Khaleda Zia wanted to go abroad for treatment it would have to be in accordance with the law.
‘The court has directed that Khaleda Zia can have treatment in the country only. So, if she wants something more, then it has to be reported to the court and the court will decide about that,’ he said.
Khaleda Zia was earlier taken to the Evercare Hospital in April for a medical check-up.
She has long been suffering from various ailments, including liver cirrhosis, arthritis, diabetes and kidney, lung and eye problems.
On February 1, 2022, Khaleda left the same hospital for the last time following a 81-day stay after she was admitted to the hospital on November 13, 2021.
Her November 13 admission was only six days after she had returned home from the hospital.
The former PM has so far received treatment at the hospital as a patient of its inpatient department several times since March 25, 2020.
On March 25, 2020, amid the Covid situation, the government suspended her jail sentences in two graft cases and released her from the prison cell of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University on conditions that she would take medical treatment at home and would not leave the country.
Khaleda was sent to the old Dhaka Central Jail after a lower court on February 8, 2018 sentenced her to five-year imprisonment in the Zia Orphanage Trust corruption case. Later, she was found guilty in another corruption case the same year.
