Doctors in the U.K. Are Optimistic About Malala's Recovery

AP
Alexander Abad-Santos 1,950 Views Oct 15, 2012

There's a very good reason to hope for the recovery of Malala, the 14-year-old blogger gunned down and hunted by the Taliban: the British physicians say they wouldn't have brought her to England if they were not optimistic about her chances. "Doctors ... believe she has a chance of making a good recovery on every level," said Dr. Dave Rosser, a trauma expert and the hospital medical director at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital (where Malala is being treated) in a Reuters report. That is great news for those looking for Malala to pull through, especially after the grim report from a source in the hospital Malala was being treated in Pakistan who told Al-Jazeera that Malala had a "very limited chance of life left."  "Pakistani surgeons removed a bullet from near her spinal cord during a three-hour operation the day after the attack last week, but she now needs intensive specialist follow-up care," adds Reuters. She'll be scheduled to get plenty of that under Rosser's care—his hospital, as The Guardian's James Meikle reports, specializes in treating soldiers wounded in Afghanistan so a case like Malala's, where she was shot in the neck and head, is familiar to the Queen Elizabeth team.

What's also good news is that if/when Malala recovers—Rosser says that rehab will take months—she'll be safer. The Taliban has promised kill her should she survive, and Prime Minister David Cameron is aware of this and has adjusted security accordingly. "You wouldn’t expect me to talk about security matters in detail but certainly security has been taken into account," his spokeswoman was quoted as saying in Pakistan's Dawn newspaper.

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