Road to recovery: ‘When Malala fell, the world rose up’

Father says 15-year-old activist is recovering at ‘encouraging speed’.

LONDON:

The response of Pakistan to the shooting of child activist Malala Yousafzai by the Taliban was a “turning point” for the country, her father said on Friday at the British hospital where she is recuperating.

“When she fell, Pakistan stood and the world rose. This is a turning point,” a clearly emotional Ziauddin Yousafzai told journalists.

He said Malala, 15, was recovering “at an encouraging speed” in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, where she was brought from Pakistan on October 15.

Malala was shot in the head in an attack which attracted condemnation in Pakistan and around the world after she was singled out by the Taliban for punishment because she campaigned for girls to be educated in Swat Valley.

“She is not just my daughter, she is everybody’s daughter,” her father said.

He thanked the doctors at the hospital in the city in central England, saying: “She got the right treatment, at the right place, at the right time. She is recovering at an encouraging speed and we are very happy.”

At one point, Ziauddin had to stop and compose himself as he recalled how in the aftermath of the shooting he asked his brother-in-law to make arrangements for a funeral because he did not believe Malala would survive.

Asked how he felt when he and his family saw Malala for the first time since they arrived in Britain on Thursday, he said: “I love her and last night when we met her there were tears in our eyes out of happiness.”

Malala’s mother and two brothers have also come to Birmingham, where the girl is being treated in the highly specialised hospital where service personnel who are seriously injured in Afghanistan are taken. Doctors have said a bullet grazed Malala’s brain and came within centimetres of killing her, travelling through her head and neck before lodging in her left shoulder.

She requires reconstructive surgery, but she must first fight off an infection in the path of the bullet and recover her strength, which could take months. Her skull will need reconstructing either by reinserting bone or using a titanium plate.

Malala’s condition satisfactory: minister

In Peshawar, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said on Friday that Malala’s vision was improving and she was communicating through written notes. “Her condition is satisfactory,” he told journalists at the Officers Mess following a visit to the UK where he visited Malala in the hospital.

Iftikhar said that while Malala could not speak due to a tracheotomy procedure, she is able to walk with support. He ruled out any permanent damage to her.

The minister said Malala’s doctors told him that her recovery could take up to a minimum of four weeks and two months at the most.

He also made sure to praise the doctors who treated Malala in Peshawar. “Their contribution to Malala’s treatment was basic and of prime importance, and their job was even appreciated by British doctors,” he said.

The Pakistan government wishes to see Malala back in Swat and has even offered her security – but her parents declined the offer, he said. “She is important and we want her to come back and raise a voice for peace,” he said.

(With additional reporting by Manzoor Ali in Peshawar)

Published in The Express Tribune, October 27^th, 2012.