KP govt not in the loop as Malala is airlifted to Pindi

Teenage education activist Malala Yousafzai was airlifted to Rawalpindi on Tuesday as doctors claimed her condition had improved after removing the bullet from her body. According to Colonel Junaid, one of the doctors treating the 14-year-old victim of a cowardly Taliban shooting, Malala would be treated at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Army Institute of Cardiology. A report by AFP, quoting another doctor Mumtaz Khan, said that Malala had 70 percent chance of survival. “At the moment her condition is better,” he said. “She has been put on a ventilator for two days. The bullet has affected some part of the brain, but there is a 70 percent chance that she will survive.” Mehmoodul Hasan, one of Malala’s relatives, said the family had been told that her condition had improved but that doctors were sending her medical reports abroad. “They are checking if better facilities are available in the UK or Dubai or any other country, then they will decide about sending her abroad, otherwise they will treat her here,” said Hasan. On the other hand, the provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) claimed that it was not taken into confidence over relocating the teenage terror victim. KP Information Minister Iftikhar Hussain said he came to know about the airlifting through television reports, which were informed by the KP governor. Soon after Malala’s surgery was completed at the Combined Military Hospital (CMH) in Peshawar, the information minister had said that her condition was “satisfactory”. But after she was airlifted to Rawalpindi, Hussain said that her condition was “serious”, while requesting the army officers to inform the people about Malala’s condition, as people from all over the region and rest of the country were worried. Highly-placed officials told Pakistan Today that the federal government and the military had made the decision to shift Malala to Rawalpindi without bothering to take the provincial government into confidence. Another senior official confirmed on the condition of anonymity that the high ups of the army and the Peshawar CMH administration had refused to allow several provincial ministers and lawmakers from seeing the terror victim and enquiring about her health. “Some of the ministers succeeded in entering the CMH early in the day, but later almost all the visiting ministers and MPs were denied entry,” the official added. Briefing the media about Shazia, one of the other girls injured in the attack, the information minister said she had been shifted to Peshawar and was admitted at the CMH. He said that Shazia had sustained two bullets and now her treatment was in progress.