LONDON 20/10 - Doctors at a
British hospital say Pakistani teen Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban because she
stood up for education for girls, is improving but fighting an infection. Malala has been able to stand for the first time
since the attack and is communicating by writing.
But the
14-year-old whose plight has aroused international concern is still fighting an
infection caused by the bullet that entered her head, burrowed past her jaw and
lodged above her shoulder blade, said David Rosser, medical director at Queen
Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, in central England. Malala was flown to the
hospital from Pakistan this week for specialized treatment.
Rosser said
Malala has continued to show signs of improvement since waking from a long
anesthesia.
"One of
the first things she asked the nurses was what country she was in," he
told reporters. "She's closer to the edge of the woods, but she's not out
of the woods."
The teenager
was shot Oct. 9 aboard a school bus in Pakistan's Swat Valley, a scenic region
that has come under the sway of Taliban militants and their fanatical Islamist
ideology.
Malala had
risen to prominence by passionately defending the right to education for girls,
in defiance of Taliban teaching; she wrote a blog about her thoughts and
experiences for the BBC's Urdu Service.
 |
| Malala in 2009 (Getty Images) |
Three
brothers have been arrested in connection with the shooting, though Pakistani authorities
said none was believed to have been the gunman. Officials in Pakistan were
quoted this week as saying that the suspected attacker had been detained in
2009 during a military offensive in the Swat Valley but later released.
The Taliban
has vowed to finish Malala off, prompting tight security at the Birmingham
hospital.
Far from
quashing Malala's cause, the attack sparked huge rallies across Pakistan and
the rest of the world on her behalf. Rosser said his young patient was
"keen to thank people" for their outpouring of support and wanted the
world to be kept apprised of her condition.
The bullet
that struck her did not penetrate her skull, Rosser said. Instead, it entered
her head near her left eyebrow, then traveled under the surface of the skin
down the side of her head and neck. Shock waves from the bullet shattered a
bone in her skull, and fragments were driven into her brain.
Two other
girls in the bus were wounded in the attack, one of them critically. They
remain in Pakistan.
Rosser said
that scans had shown some damage to Malala's brain. But encouragingly, "at
this stage we're not seeing any deficit in terms of function," he said.
"She seems to be able to understand; she has some memory.... She's able to
stand. She's got motor control, so she's able to write."
Malala
appears to have some recall of the attack, but those around her are refraining
from bringing up the topic, Rosser said.
"From a
lot of the work we've done with our military casualties, we know that reminding
people of traumatic events at this stage increases the potential for
psychological problems later," he said.
A tube in
her trachea makes it impossible for her to speak for now, but the hospital is
trying to arrange for her to listen to her father on the phone. Her family
remains in Pakistan; efforts are underway to bring them to Britain to be at her
bedside.
Rosser said
the teen would require a few weeks of rest before surgeons try to reconstruct
the damaged part of her skull and possibly her jaw.
"Its
going to be a process of recuperation and recovery," he said. "If
things go well, there shouldn't be dramatic changes to her condition; it should
be a gradual recovery of strength.
"It
would be over-optimistic to say that there are not going to be further
problems," Rosser said. "But it is possible she'll make a full
recovery."
From Los Angeles Times
No comments:
Post a Comment