Resilience unmatched: Malala recovers after successful skull surgery

The procedure was aimed at restoring hearing in her left ear.

LONDON: Peace icon Malala Yousufzai underwent successful surgery at a British hospital to reconstruct her skull and help restore lost hearing.

A team of doctors carried out a five-hour operation on Saturday on the 15-year-old, who was shot in October and brought to Britain for treatment.

The procedures carried out were cranial reconstruction, aimed at mending parts of her skull with a titanium plate, and a cochlear implant designed to restore hearing on her left side, which was damaged in the attack.



“Both operations were a success and Malala is now recovering in hospital,” said a statement on Sunday from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, central England, where she is being treated.

The iconic child activist’s condition was described as stable and the statement said her medical team were very pleased with the progress she has made. “She is awake and talking to staff and members of her family,” it added.

Malala became an international symbol of resistance to the Taliban’s efforts to deny women education and other rights, and more than 250,000 people have signed online petitions calling for her to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

She will now continue recuperating at the Queen Elizabeth hospital, which has a specialist unit where doctors have treated hundreds of soldiers wounded in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the hospital statement said.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 4^th, 2013.