Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenage education activist who was shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating girls’ right to education, would return to a specialist hospital in Britain for surgery to reconstruct her skull, doctors said on Wednesday..
Malala, 15, who was shot in October and brought to Britain for treatment, was discharged from the hospital earlier this month to spend time with her family after her initial treatment phase. Her doctors said she would return to the hospital within the next 10 days to undergo surgery known as titanium cranioplasty to repair a missing area of her skull with a specially moulded titanium plate.
Surgeons at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEHB) have been giving details about two procedures due to be carried out on the 15-year-old.
The first procedure would involve drilling into her skull and inserting a custom-made metal plate.
Doctors said Malala was completely deaf in her left ear as she was shot at point blank range by the Taliban.
“The shockwave destroyed her eardrum and ossicles (the bones for hearing),” doctors said. The second procedure would involve fitting a small electronic device that was meant to provide a sense of sound to someone who is profoundly deaf or hard of hearing. Both procedures would take a total of around four to five hours.
Dr Dave Rosser, medical director at the QEHB, said, “Her recovery is remarkable and it is a testament to her strength and desire to get better. There is no doubt that the surgery she underwent in Pakistan was life saving. Had that surgery not been of such a high standard she would have died”.