LAHORE: Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s personal physician has requested the Punjab government to provide round-the-clock expert cardiac care to the incarcerated PML-N leader at a facility where cardiology intervention and multidisciplinary backup is available.

Referring to special medical board’s recommendations made on Feb 5, Mr Sharif’s personal physician Dr Adnan Khan on Saturday wrote a letter to the Punjab additional chief secretary (Home), requesting the government to execute recommendations on priority considering the serious concerns of former prime minister’s medical condition, in particular unstable cardiac disease.

Mr Sharif was shifted from the Services Hospital to Kot Lakhpat jail on Feb 7 (Thursday) after having treatment for five days. He is serving a seven-year imprisonment in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills corruption case.

The third special medical board had examined Mr Sharif at the Services Hospital and unanimously said the patient, 69 years of age, was a well-established case of coronary artery disease with recently documented reversible ischemia on thallium scan and having recurrent angina, which was his primary problem.

If in the opinion of expert cardiologists it is considered necessary, the medical board recommended, the previous cardiac history and present investigations might be further discussed with his primary treating cardiologist.

“It is requested that considering the serious concerns of former prime minister’s medical condition, in particular unstable cardiac disease, the final recommendations of the Special Medical Board may be executed on priority,” urged Dr Adnan who is also the chief executive of the Sharif Medical City, Lahore.

A home department senior official said the government had shifted Mr Sharif back to the hospital when the doctors formally discharged him. “The government could not take risk of shifting Mr Sharif without making sure he was stable as it is responsible for the safety of everyone,” the official said.

“Mr Sharif himself kept asking the government to shift him to jail but the government did not shift him until the treating doctors checked and counter-checked patient’s health and formally discharged,” the official said.

Punjab Information Minister Fayyazul Hasan Chohan had told Dawn that on the recommendations of the Services Hospital’s medical board, Mr Sharif was asked to go either to the Punjab Institute of Cardiology, Shaikh Zayed Hospital or Jinnah Hospital (Lahore) but he refused.

“The board in its report mentioned that Mr Sharif has heart and other seven or eight health issues and he should be shifted to any of the three hospitals for his treatment but he refused. We cannot force the patient,” Mr Chohan said.

The information minister alleged that Mr Sharif in fact wanted to go to London and that’s why he was refusing treatment in local health facilities. “He wants nothing short of going to London,” Mr Chohan said, adding that Mr Sharif would be provided best possible treatment in jail as well.

Published in Dawn, February 10th, 2019