Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan was moved from jail to a authorities hospital in Islamabad for eye treatment underneath tight safety, prompting his party and household to elevate considerations over what they described as a midnight operation shrouded in secrecy.
The former cricketer-turned-politician was transferred from Adiala Jail, the place he has been incarcerated, to Islamabad’s Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) within the early hours of Tuesday for a scheduled second eye injection, the hospital mentioned in a press assertion.
Concerns have been rising over the well being of the 74-year-old politician after his lawyer claimed he had lost 85 per cent of vision in his right eye due to delayed therapy whereas in custody.
The authorities has mentioned Khan is present process therapy and had surgical procedure in late January to take away a blood clot in his proper eye. However, his family has objected to his receiving treatment with out session together with his trusted private medical doctors, demanding pressing and impartial medical care.
In an announcement issued early Tuesday, PIMS mentioned Khan was examined by a board of specialists, together with a guide heart specialist who carried out an echocardiography and ECG.
“Mr Imran Khan was found to be clinically stable,” the hospital mentioned, including {that a} second dose of an intravitreal Anti-VEGF injection was administered by surgeons from PIMS and Al-Shifa Eye Hospital.
“The procedure was performed as day-care surgery. During the course of his stay, he remained vitally stable before, during and after the procedure, and was discharged with instructions for care, follow-up advice, and documentation,” the assertion added.
Khan’s international press adviser Zulfiqar Bukhari mentioned PIMS had issued a press launch confirming he had been taken to the hospital.
“PTI strongly maintains that a perfunctory two-line procedural note cannot conceivably substitute for a comprehensive, independently verified medical report,” he mentioned, including that every little thing the hospital had acknowledged was “irrelevant and only conjecture” within the absence of affirmation by Khan’s private medical doctors.
“In light of Mr Khan’s custodial status, access should be granted to his personal physician and family. Continued opacity surrounding his medical treatment serves only to intensify public disquiet and further undermine confidence in the integrity of the process,” he added.
Reacting to the event, the PTI’s official X account mentioned: “The situation demands transparency, not secrecy.” The party mentioned such “clandestine actions only give rise to more questions.”
His sister, Aleema Khanum, who has been staging sit-in protests outdoors the jail for days, mentioned they solely came upon from information stories that Khan was “taken to PIMS again in the middle of the night, supposedly for his second injection in the eye”, calling the in a single day operation “criminal”.
“We do not trust the diagnosis or test reports from government medical facilities. There are already reports coming from PIMS that doctors are being threatened with serious consequences if any information is leaked about Imran Khan,” she mentioned.
She requested why the household was not knowledgeable and what authorities have been hiding.
“Our family rejects their reports even if they issue these doctored reports to the public. We stand by our demand that Imran Khan be examined and treated at Shifa International in Islamabad by specialists, under the supervision of his personal doctors and in the presence of his family,” she added.
Parliamentary Affairs minister Tariq Fazal Chaudhry additionally addressed considerations surrounding the transfer, saying there had been enchancment in Khan’s eyesight.
“It is necessary to clarify that the government took him to PIMS under strict security arrangements while fulfilling all legal and humanitarian requirements,” he mentioned.
Khan could be administered a 3rd dose of the injection precisely 30 days later, on 24 March, he added.
“According to doctors’ instructions, there was an improvement in eyesight after the first procedure, in view of which expert physicians recommended a second procedure,” he mentioned.
Khan, a polarising determine in Pakistan, has been in jail since August 2023, when he was first arrested following his conviction in a corruption case.
Although he was later granted bail in some circumstances, he has remained incarcerated due to a number of different costs and convictions filed towards him since then.
He can also be serving a separate sentence for allegedly securing land from a enterprise tycoon in return for facilitating the transfer of £190m recovered by the UK’s National Crime Agency throughout his time in workplace.
His alleged state of affairs has prompted a gaggle of 14 cricket stars, together with from political rival India, to demand better treatment to Pakistan’s cricketing icon.
