Bangladesh ex-PM Khaleda Zia hospitalised again

Bangladesh ex-PM Khaleda Zia hospitalised again

Former Prime Minister and BNP Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia was admitted to Evercare Hospital in the capital on Wednesday night.

Khaleda Zia has been brought to the hospital for some urgent tests. She has been admitted to the Critical Care Unit (CCU) as per the advice of the medical board, her personal physician Prof AZM Zahid Hossain told reporters around 9:30pm.

"The medical board will meet at night and decide the next course of action for her treatment," he added.

Khaleda was taken to Evercare Hospital in the evening for health check-up.

Earlier on March 31, the BNP chairpersons was admitted to the hospital and stayed there for two days for some pathological tests and regular examinations.

Since her conditional release from jail in 2020, the BNP chief has been receiving treatment at the hospital 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 a politically motivated case on February 8, 2018. Later, she was found guilty in another politically motivated 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 stay in her Gulshan house and not leave the country. That has since been extended multiple times to keep her out of jail.

Khaleda's doctors have been recommending sending her abroad since she was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis in November 2021.

On October 26 last year, three US specialist doctors completed the hepatic procedure known as transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS procedure) to stop water accretion in Khaleda Zia's stomach and chest, and bleeding in her liver.