Staff Reporter:
BNP Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia, who has been undergoing treatment at Evercare Hospital in Dha-ka for nearly four months, was brought back to cabin again around two hours after she had been trans-ferred to the Coronary Care Unit (CCU) on Monday evening.
“Khaleda Zia was transferred to the CCU at about 5:30 pm as per the recommendation of her medical board since her condition deteriorated,” said BNP media cell member Sayrul Kabir Khan.
She was taken back to the cabin later at 7:30pm after examining her health condition, he said.
The 78-year-old former prime minister has been suffering from various ailments, including liver cirrho-sis, arthritis, diabetes, kidney, lung, heart, and eye problems.
The BNP chairperson has been undergoing treatment at the hospital since August 9 for various health complications.
On October 26, three US specialist doctors completed the hepatic procedure known as transjugular intra-hepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS procedure) to stop water accretion in Khaleda Zia’s stomach and chest, and bleeding in her liver.
The US doctors–Hamid Rabb, Christos Georgiades and James P. A. Hamilton from Johns Hopkins Uni-versity’s School of Medicine–went to Bangladesh on October 25 and decided to complete the TIPS pro-cedure after assessing Khaleda’s health condition and test reports.
Khaleda was doing fine after undergoing a successful hepatic procedure by the US doctors.
TIPS is a procedure that involves inserting a stent (tube) to connect the portal veins to adjacent blood vessels that have lower pressure. This relieves the pressure of blood flowing through the diseased liver and can help stop bleeding and fluid backup. A TIPS also relieves the high blood pressure in the portal vein (called portal hypertension) that often occurs in the setting of liver cirrhosis.
Khaleda’s doctors have been recommending sending Khaleda abroad since she was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis in November 2021.
The BNP chief’s family also sought permission from the government on different occasions, but the Law Minister said Khaleda has no scope to go abroad for treatment as she was released on conditions suspend-ing her sentence in corruption cases.
Since her conditional release from jail in 2020, the BNP chief has been receiving treatment at the hospi-tal under a medical board headed by cardiologist Prof Shahabuddin Talukder.
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 ex-ecutive order suspending her sentence on March 25, 2020, with the condition that she stay in her Gul-shan house and not leave the country.
