'Heaviest woman' Eman Ahmed battling multiple conditions in UAE, may take at least a year to recover

New Delhi: Eman Ahmed, once considered the world's heaviest woman, is currently undergoing her treatment for obesity at a hospital in Abu Dhabi.

Doctors at Burjeel Hospital say Eman, who left India last week in a chaotic manner, is also suffering from a 'cardiac issue', thyroid imbalance, poor kidney and liver function, COPD and infected bed sores, apart from her severe obesity.

According to Shamsheer Vayalil, founder and managing director of VPS Healthcare, which runs a chain of 16 hospitals in the Middle East, Eman will take at least a year to recover. Burjeel Hospital, where Eman is now being treated is a part of VPS Healthcare.

“We've dealt with several complicated cases but not such a sensitive one with so much attention around it. We didn't want it to become an Indian doctors versus UAE doctors fight either. But we decided to go all out and help Shaimaa since I was aware from the beginning that Eman would take at least a year to recover,” Vayalil told TOI on Saturday.

At Abu Dhabi's Burjeel Hospital, she is being treated by a multi-disciplinary team of 20 doctors, said a statement issued by the hospital.

Doctors are 'currently focused on improving her health condition and ensuring that as part of the hospital's short term goal, Eman is able to sit with minimal to no assistance,' added the statement.

The Egyptian woman, who weighed 500kgs, arrived in Mumbai on a specially-modified Airbus plane on February 11 and was put on a special liquid diet to reduce her weight so that doctors could perform bariatric surgery.

On March 7, a team of Saifee hospital doctors led by bariatric surgeon Dr Muffazal Lakdawala performed a bariatric surgery on Eman, reducing the size of her stomach to restrict food intake.

Eman left India last Thursday amid spat between her family and doctors at the Saifee hospital over her actual weight loss and recovery.

Ahead of her departure to UAE, Dr Lakdawala said that at 176kgs (down 324 kgs), Eman has left India the healthiest she has been in the last decade or so.