WEB DESK
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) Chairperson Khaleda Zia will travel to London for advanced medical treatment. BNP’s Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul formally announced it on Sunday night. He added that she will travel by an air ambulance provided by Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Khaleda is set to leave Dhaka tonight.
Earlier on Sunday, she held a meeting with the standing committee members of her party in Dhaka. Khaleda, the 79-year-old former prime minister of Bangladesh, who has been suffering from multiple health complications, including arthritis, diabetes, liver cirrhosis, and kidney ailments, requires specialised care unavailable in Bangladesh, according to her doctors.
According to the Daily Star newspaper, Khaleda is expected to stay with her son Tarique Rahman in London before heading to the US for treatment of her ongoing liver complications.
This will be her first reunion with her son Tarique Rahman in seven years and her first overseas visit since she was freed from jail. She was convicted in the Zia Orphanage Trust and Zia Charitable Trust graft cases.
Her son, Tarique, who is acting chairman of BNP, has gone into self-imposed exile in London and is facing corruption cases in Bangladesh.
On August 6 last year, Khaleda was fully freed by an order from President of Bangladesh Mohammed Shahabuddin after the Awami League government was ousted by a mass uprising.
Khaleda will undergo a liver transplant at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland, US. Her medical records and test reports have already been sent there, writes the Daily Star newspaper.
During the Awami League government, Khaleda’s family requested the authorities several times to permit her to go abroad for treatment, but she was denied.