Shooting victim walks out of hospital
IT WAS a day that her family feared might never come. Shot in the head by the Taleban in Pakistan for promoting education for girls, Malala Yousufzai was critically injured and hovered between life and death. But yesterday she walked out of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, waving to well-wishers.
After the shooting in the Swat Valley, when a bullet ripped through her skull and grazed her brain, the first images the world saw were of a small girl, her head bandaged, the sheet covering her spotted with blood.
The hospital released a video showing Malala walking out of the ward, chatting and hugging her nurses. She will soon return for more surgery, but, for now, she is back with her family at their temporary home in the West Midlands.
Dave Rosser, the medical director at the hospital, where the 15- year- old was sent after the shooting on October 9, said: ‘‘We decided that she would benefit from being at home with her parents and two brothers.’’
Malala has been allowed on regular ‘‘home leave’’ in the past few weeks but was now able to spend the night with her family. Her father has just been appointed the education attache at the Pakistani consulate in Birmingham.
It is not known how much the teenager remembers of the day a gunman sought her out on a school bus in her home town of Mingora. The bullet hit her just above the eye, travelling down the side of her jaw and through her neck, before lodging in the tissue above her shoulder.
A Taleban spokesman said
that Malala, who had written an anonymous blog for the BBC’s Urdu service, had been targeted for ‘‘promoting Western culture in Pashtun areas’’.
At her bedside just after the accident, her father said: ‘‘Pray to God for her; we need a lot of prayers.’’ But a few weeks after the attack, she was able to stand up and communicate by writing notes. The surgery is expected to involve reconstructing her skull, either with titanium plate or with a piece of bone removed after the attack.
The Times named Malala its Young Person of the Year last week, ‘‘ for heroism not only beyond her years but almost beyond belief’’.