Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) leader Nawaz Sharif’s lawyer on Friday submitted a fresh medical report in the Lahore High Court (LHC), a few weeks ahead of his planned return to Pakistan on Oct. 21 after four years in self-exile.
According to the report, the former prime minister has “some residual angina symptoms” that require “frequent follow-up investigations” in London and Pakistan. Angina is the medical term for chest pain arising from coronary heart disease.
Submitted by lawyer Amjad Pervez, the report is signed by Carlo Di Mario, a consultant cardiologist at the Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals in London. It states that Mario has been treating Nawaz throughout his stay in London. “We first tried medical treatment, strengthening his antianginal therapy. His persistent anginal symptoms and restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 epidemic precluded a safe return of [Nawaz] to Pakistan,” he wrote, adding that doctors had conducted another angioplasty in November 2022 after Nawaz’s symptoms worsened to correct an “occluded left circumflexed artery.”
The condition, it said, had required “rotational atherectomy, intravascular lithotripsy, multiple stents deployed and expanded under [intravascular ultrasound] guidance.” As a result of the “diffuse distal coronary disease” and multiple comorbidities such as diabetes, Nawaz would continue to require frequent follow-up investigations both in London and Pakistan, it added.
The LHC allowed Nawaz to travel abroad on medical grounds in 2019 while serving out a seven-year jail term. According to an undertaking submitted to court, Nawaz was initially allowed to leave for four weeks, with an option to extend this facility on the basis of his medical reports. His brother, PMLN President Shehbaz Sharif, had likewise submitted an undertaking to ensure regular medical reports were provided to court.
After Nawaz failed to return, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) declared him a proclaimed offender in 2020 in various graft cases.