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Pakistani Girl Activist Shot by Taliban Will Have a Titanium Plate Fitted to Her Skull in Final Surgery

By Christine Hsu | Update Date: Jan 30, 2013 12:21 PM EST

A Pakistani teenage girl shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating girls' education in the South Asian country is headed toward full recovery once she undergoes a final surgery to have a titanium plate fitted to her skull, doctors revealed Wednesday.

Doctors said that 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai needs the operation to replace the bone shattered when a she was gunned down at point blank nearly four months ago, when a bullet had went through her skull.

Malala will also be fitted with a cochlear implant to help restore hearing in her left ear.

Dr. Dave Rosser of Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital told the Associated Press that the schoolgirl had made a "remarkable recovery."

"She's very lively, she's got a great sense of humor," Rosser told reporters at the hospital, according to Associated Press. "She's not naive at all about what happened to her and the situation she's looking forward to in terms of being a high-profile person, and potentially a high-profile target. She's not naive to any of that, but she remains incredibly determined, incredibly cheerful and incredibly determined to speak for her cause."

Both the skull reconstruction surgery and the cochlear implant operation will be performed within the next 10 days and will take about 90 minutes each, according to doctors.

Doctors said that even though the cochear implant will be turned on in about a month's time, it could take anywhere between 15 and 18 months before Malala can hear in her left ear. However, doctors said that in time Malala's hearing in her left ear would return to normal levels.

"Anybody who's required a lengthy intensive care stay or undergone significant neurological injuries, studies tell us people don't report feeling as well as they used to for 15 to 18 months," he said, according to the Associated Press.

Doctors explained that how the titanium plate would be placed over a hole in Malala's skull. Doctors said that they had to remove a damaged piece of the teenager's missing skull had been surgically inserted in her abdomen to prevent the skull piece from getting infected in case it was needed to fix her skull at a later date.

However, doctors had eventually decided to use a titanium plate instead of the skull fragment still in Malala's abdomen to cover the hole.

Doctors said that Malala did not appear to show any signs of brain damage, memory loss or hormonal changes.

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