While she’s not out of the woods yet by a long shot, the news coming in about Malala Yousafzai’s condition is good.
She’s now able to stand with assistance of nurses.
The 14/15-year old (every news source contradicts each other and themselves) girl has been a vocal opponent of the Taliban going all the way back to 2009, when as a 10/11-year old she provided her diary to the BBC, illustrating the cruelty the Taliban committed during its occupation of her home district of the Swat Valley.
Since then, she’s become an advocate for educating young girls in Pakistan, a thought considered so offensive by the Taliban that they decided to shoot this young girl in the head earlier this month.
She was flown to Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital on Monday to receive specialist treatment.
The doctors, after looking her over, could tell that the bullet was shot at point-blank range. Which goes to show you there’s nothing the Taliban can’t screw up.
“She seems to be able to understand, she has some memory,” Dave Rosser, the medical director, said. “She’s able to stand, she’s got motor control. … Whether there are any subtle intellectual or memory deficits down the line, it’s too early to say.”
Some reconstructive surgery will probably be in order, Rosser says, but that will have to wait for several weeks until an infection she’s currently fighting has been brought under control.
We originally got reports that her family was with her in England, but Al-Jazeera has since reported that they are in Pakistan, leaving Malala alone in the hospital. CNN says the hospital is trying to arrange for her to listen to a phone call from her father. She can’t speak at the moment because a tracheotomy tube was added when the bullet caused swelling in her throat.
“Officials in the Swat Valley originally said Yousafzai was 14 years old but officials at her school confirmed that her birthday was July 12, 1997, making her 15,” Al-Jazeera reports.
