Photo by LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images
By Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY
LONDON - Malala Yousufzai, the schoolgirl and women's rights activist
from Pakistan who was shot in the head by the Taliban and subsequently
flown to the United Kingdom for treatment, has been discharged from
Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital, the hospital said Friday.
Yousufzai
was discharged on Thursday, but will be re-admitted in late January or
early February for reconstructive surgery to her skull, the hospital
said.
"Malala is a strong young woman and has worked hard with the
people caring for her to make excellent progress in her recovery," said
Dave Rosser, medical director of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
"Following discussions with Malala and her medical team, we decided that
she would benefit from being at home with her parents and two
brothers."
Yousufzai, now 15, was shot and wounded on her way home
from school in October last year. The Taliban claimed responsibility
for the shooting, saying she was promoting "Western thinking."
Her
departure from the hospital comes in the same week that gunmen in
Islamabad on motorcycles sprayed a van carrying employees from a
community center with bullets, killing five female teachers and two aid
workers.
The director of the group that the seven worked for says
he suspects it may have been the latest in a series of attacks targeting
anti-polio efforts in Pakistan. Some Islamic militants oppose the
vaccination campaigns, accusing health workers of acting as spies for
the United States and alleging the vaccine is intended to make Muslim
children sterile.
Last month, nine people working on an anti-polio
vaccination campaign were shot and killed. Four of those shootings were
in the northwest where Tuesday's attack took place.
Earlier this
week, Yousufzai's father was given a diplomatic post in the U.K.
Ziauddin Yousufzai has been appointed Pakistan's education attache in
Birmingham, the Associated Press reported.
In a post on Twitter on
Friday, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his wife, Sarah,
wrote, "Good news that Malala is well enough to leave hospital. We wish
her well as her recovery continues with her family."
Malala Yousufzai was shortlisted for Time magazine's "Person of the Year" in 2012.