Khaleda undergoes stenting in heart after cardiac arrest

BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia, who was taken to Evercare Hospital in the early hours of Saturday after she fell ill suddenly, underwent stenting in the heart as she was diagnosed with 95% block in main artery and a mild cardiac arrest, confirmed the party's Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir.

"Doctors hope she will recover from the cardiac disease for now," the secretary-general said at an event at the BNP chairperson's political office in the Capital's Gulshan.

"The 10-member medical board for the treatment of Khaleda Zia advised taking her to the USA, the UK or Germany for advanced treatment," her personal physician Professor AZM Zahid Hossain told the media.

Meanwhile, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said the opposition party leader will have to go through a legal procedure and need court permission for going abroad for treatment.

"We have no other alternative to court," he said in a reply to the query of journalists at an event at the Institution of Diploma Engineers Bangladesh in the capital.

Khaleda was taken to Evercare Hospital at 2:55am on Saturday after she suddenly fell ill at her Gulshan residence. BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir and other party leaders rushed to the hospital at the time.

The 76-year-old former prime minister has been suffering from various ailments, including liver cirrhosis, arthritis, diabetes, kidney, lung and eye problems.

Earlier in November last year, she was admitted to the Evercare Hospital in the Bashundhara Residential Area and returned home after an 81-day stay.

Khaleda 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 8 February 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 jail sentence on 25 March 2020, with conditions that she will stay in her Gulshan house and will not leave the country.