On BBC Three tonight: Taliban schoolgirl victim given cochlear implant

Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl shot in the head by the Taliban last October and then treated for her in juries in the UK, will feature in a BBC Three documentary tonight.

Malala was shot by militants on her school bus in Pakistan after campaigning for women’s rights to education. She was flown to the UK shortly after the attack so doctors could repair the extensive damage to her skull and fit her with a cochlear implant to restore some hearing to her left ear.

Tonight’s documentary, called Shot for Going to School, will focus on the area where she was shot and the continuing struggle for equality. Malala has now resumed her education in Birmingham after recovering from her injuries and the subsequent surgery that replaced a large part of her skull with a titanium plate along with the insertion of  a cochlear implant.

Malala lost all of the hearing in her left ear because the bullet, en route from its entry near her left eye to its exit on the side of her head, destroyed her ear drum and the tiny bones of the middle-ear. The surgery took place at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham which has been providing cochlear implants since 1990.

See the documentary on BBC Three tonight at 9pm or on catch-up after the broadcast. You can read Malala’s own blog here.

By Andy Palmer, The Limping Chicken’s Editor-at-Large.

Andy volunteers for the Peterborough and District Deaf Children’s Society on their website, deaf football coaching and other events as well as working for a hearing loss charity. Contact him on twitter @LC_AndyP (all views expressed are his own).

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