Doctors have urged immediate access to jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny saying his health is rapidly deteriorating and faces a high risk of cardiac arrest at any minute if not given proper medical treatment.
Navalny who is President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent opponent went on hunger strike on March 31 to demand proper medical treatment for back pain and numbness in his legs and hands.
His personal doctor Anastasia Vasilyeva and three more doctors including cardiologist Yaroslav Ashikhmin have asked prison officials to grant them immediate access.
“Our patient can die any minute,” Ashikhmin said in a post on Facebook on Saturday, pointing to the opposition politician’s high potassium levels and saying Navalny should be moved to intensive care.
The doctors said he had to be examined immediately “taking into account the blood tests and his recent poisoning”.
Navalny, 44, was imprisoned in February and is serving 2 1/2 years on old embezzlement charges in a penal colony in the town of Pokrov around 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Moscow.
