Doctors warn of high risk of death for Zia
ACTIVISTS REITERATE DEMAND THAT OPPOSITION LEADER BE ALLOWED TO GO ABROAD FOR TREATMENT
DOCTORS treating ailing Bangladesh opposition leader and former prime minister Khaleda Zia said last Sunday (28) they feared for her life if she was not allowed to fly abroad for medical care.
Zia, 76, a rival of current prime minister Sheikh Hasina, has been diagnosed with liver cirrhosis. Her doctors said she suffered three massive internal bleeds in the past two weeks.
“We don’t have the means and supportive technology... here to control and stop rebleeding,” her chief doctor Fakhruddin Mohammad Siddiqui told reporters at her home, flanked by four other doctors on her medical team.
He said there was a 50 per cent chance that Zia would suffer another episode of internal bleeding in the next week, and a 70 per cent chance it would occur in the next six weeks.
“The chances of controlling the rebleeding are slim,” he said. “In that case, there is higher risk of her death.
“If we want to save the life of the patient, we need to do TIPS,” he said, referring to a sophisticated medical procedure that he said was available only in developed countries such the United States, Britain and Germany.
Zia has been in the critical care unit of a Dhaka hospital since November 13, just five months after
she recovered from Covid-19. But the leader of the main opposition party has been barred by a court from leaving the country after being convicted on graft charges in 2018.
As her condition has worsened, activists and supporters of her Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) have staged protests across the country, demanding she be allowed to travel abroad for treatment.
Hasina last month appeared to reject Zia’s family and her party’s pleas.
“I have done whatever I can for Khaleda Zia. Now the law will decide the next course of action,” Hasina told a press briefing.
A minister also suggested that the BNP fly in doctors from abroad.
Zia was sentenced to 10 years in prison in February 2018 on graft charges that the BNP, which was last in power from 2001 to 2006, says were politically motivated.
She was released in March last year as her condition worsened in a jail where she was the only inmate. She has since been barred from going abroad and has been receiving treatment from a local hospital.
Her doctors and her party allege that Zia – who is suffering from heart failure, rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes – was not treated properly when she was imprisoned.