Malala back on her feet

Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai lying in her bed at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham yesterday. Malala has been able to stand with help for the first time, according to doctors treating her. AFP

Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl shot in the head by the Taliban, has been able to stand with help for the first time, doctors treating her at a British hospital said yesterday.
She is unable to talk because a breathing tube has been inserted into her windpipe but she can communicate by writing, said Dave Rosser, the medical director at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, central England.
Despite the news of Malala's progress, he warned that she is "not out of the woods yet", her doctors' chief concern being an infection in the bullet track through her head.
Malala was shot on a school bus in the former Taliban stronghold of the Swat valley on October 9 as a punishment for campaigning for the right of girls to an education, in an attack which outraged the world.
On Monday she was flown in an air ambulance from Pakistan to Birmingham, Britain's second city, where she is being cared for in the hospital that treats British soldiers seriously wounded in bomb blasts and shootings in Afghanistan.
"Malala is still showing some signs of infection which is probably related to the bullet track, some infection in the bullet track which is our key source of concern," Rosser told reporters outside the hospital.
"It's clear that she is not out of the woods yet.
"Having said that, she is doing very well. In fact, she was standing with some help for the first time this morning when I went in to see her.
He said specialists thought she would need a few weeks to rehabilitate, to make sure that the infection has cleared up before she could undergo surgery.
"Then her skull will need reconstructing either by reinserting the piece of bone that was removed initially or with a titanium plate," Rosser said.
Malala came to prominence with a blog for the BBC highlighting atrocities under the Taliban, the hardline Islamists who terrorised the Swat valley from 2007 until an army offensive in 2009.