Khaleda Zia hospitalised again

BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia was admitted to Evercare Hospital in the capital on Wednesday night.

"Madam [Khaleda] has been brought to the hospital for some urgent tests. He 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 Zia was taken to Evercare Hospital in the evening for health check-up.

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

The 78-year-old former prime minister has long been suffering from various ailments, including liver cirrhosis, arthritis, diabetes, and issues related to kidney, lung, heart, and eye.

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 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 sentence on 25 March 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 26 October 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.