PKonweb Monitor

Latest Report: Pray for my wife: Wasim Akram

EARLIER REPORT: Former cricket captain Wasim Akram’s wife is in a critical condition at a hospital in Chennai where she was rushed today after developing an “emergency situation” in an air ambulance during its scheduled refuelling at the Chennai airport in India.

Huma was admitted to Chennai’s Apollo Hospitals on advice from doctors on board the Singapore-bound air ambulance, hospital and airport sources said.

“She is receiving necessary intensive medical attention,” the hospital said in a statement.

Huma was being flown from Lahore to Singapore for neurosurgery to remove three tumors from her brain.

As the air ambulance was flying over India her condition worsened and the doctor accompanying the patient wanted her admitted in an emergency ward at the earliest since reaching Singapore would have taken another four hours, reported The Telegraph.

The pilot immediately contacted the Chennai air traffic control at 4pm and his request was relayed to the civil aviation authorities in Delhi since it was a Pakistani aircraft.

When the civil aviation and external affairs officers in India learnt about the identity of the patient and her condition they cleared the aircraft for emergency landing and also issued temporary visas to all eight persons aboard, media reports said.

Apollo Hospital sources said Huma suffered a multiple organ failure and she was put on ventilator support as soon as she was brought in but her condition remained critical.

Her pulse rate was picking up and vital parameters were better, but her condition continued to be critical, the sources said.

She was originally scheduled to receive treatment in Singapore.

Earlier, Indian airport officials had said that the flight made an unscheduled landing on a request from the pilot.

Former Indian cricketer Ravi Shastri, who was in Chennai to attend the wedding of the son of National Selection Committee Chairman K Srikkant, rushed to the hospital soon after hearing the news about Huma.

Shastri, a TV co-commentator with Akram, spent nearly two hours with him and his family at the hospital, sources added.