Fourteen-year-old Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by the Taliban, has the potential to make 'pretty much a full recovery', doctors have said.
Doctors at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham said that Malala is able to stand with help and is writing notes. Although the bullet grazed her brain, she has not shown 'any deficit in terms of function'.
"She was not out of the woods, but is doing very well," the Guardian quoted Dr Dave Rosser, medical director of the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS foundation trust, as saying.
"The bullet grazed the edge of her brain. Certainly, if you are talking a couple of inches more central, then it is almost certainly an unsurvivable injury," the doctor said.
According to the paper, initially treated by neurosurgeons at a Pakistani military hospital before being flown to the UK on Monday, Malala awoke from a medically induced coma on Tuesday afternoon and reportedly asked, 'Which country am I in?'
The doctors said Malala has memory, but they have not talked to her about the shooting.
"From a lot of work we have done with our military casualties we know that reminding people of traumatic events at this stage increases the potential for psychological problems later, so we would not do that," the paper quoted Rosser as saying.
Malala was shot in the neck and head and two other girls sustained injuries when the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan opened fire on their school van in Swat valley earlier in October.