‘I am getting better’, says Malala in video message

UK: Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl shot in the head by the Taliban for campaigning for girls’ education, said she was getting better in her first public statement released Monday.

“Today you can see that I am alive. I can speak, I can see you, I can see everyone and I am getting better day by day,” said the 15-year-old in a video message made before she underwent surgery on her skull on Saturday.

Speaking clearly in English, she said: “It’s just because of the prayers of people. Because all people -- men, women, children -- all of them have prayed for me. “And because of all these prayers God has given me this new life -- a second life. And I want to serve. I want to serve the people.

I want every girl, every child, to be educated. For that reason, we have organised the Malala Fund.” In an attack that drew worldwide condemnation, a Taliban gunman shot Malala at point-blank range as her school bus travelled through Pakistan’s Swat Valley on October 9. Surgeons in Pakistan saved her life with an initial operation to relieve the pressure on her brain before she was flown to Britain to be treated at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, central England.

AFP