BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia was rushed to the hospital in the early hours of Saturday as she was taken ill.

“Madam (Khaleda) suddenly fell ill at her Gulshan home. We rushed her to Evercare Hospital,” Khaleda’s physician Professor AZM Zahid Hossain told UNB.

The BNP chief was taken to the coronary care unit (CCU) of the hospital at 3:20am, he added.

Zahid, however, declined to elaborate on her illness.

The BNP chief left her Gulshan residence for the hospital at 2:55am and was admitted there at 3:15am, said her media wing member Sayrul Kabir Khan.

Hearing the news of Khaleda’s illness, BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir rushed to her Gulshan residence and later went to the hospital.

Coming out of the hospital around 4:30am, Fakhrul said after some tests, the doctors found that she has cardiac problems.

“Madam’s condition is stable now. How complicated her problem is can be confirmed after she undergoes different tests, especially an angiogram,” he said.

A medical board will analyze Khaleda’s condition and reports at 10:30am Saturday and decide the next course of treatment, Fakhrul added.

He hoped that Khaleda would recover as she did in the past.

The BNP leader urged the country’s people to pray for her speedy recovery.

The BNP chairperson last went to Evercare on April 6 for health check-ups.

Khaleda, a former prime minister, has been suffering from various ailments, including liver cirrhosis, arthritis, diabetes, kidney, lung and eye problems.

The 76-year-old was last admitted to Evercare on November 13 last year where she was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis.

On February 1, Khaleda returned home after an 81-day stay at the hospital as she was suffering from internal bleeding caused by liver cirrhosis.

The former prime minister 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 February 8, 2018.

Later, she was found guilty in another corruption case the same year.

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the government temporarily freed Khaleda from jail through an executive order suspending her sentence on March 25, 2020, with conditions that she will stay at her Gulshan home and not leave the country.