LONDON: Malala Yousafzai, the teenage Pakistani activist shot in the head by the Taliban, has been able to stand with help for the first time, though she still shows signs of infection, doctors treating her at a British hospital said Friday.

She is also communicating by writing notes, said Doctor Dave Rosser, the medical director at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, central England, where the teenager was taken to from Pakistan on Monday.

“Malala Yousufzai’s condition this morning is comfortable and stable,” the hospital said in a statement. “Malala’s family remain in Pakistan at this time,” it added.

Yousufzai was shot on a school bus in the former Taliban stronghold of the Swat valley last week for promoting secular views and criticising the Taliban, in an attack which outraged the world.

Dr. Rosser said the girl is “well enough that she’s agreed that she’s happy, in fact keen, for us to share more clinical detail.”

Rosser said the infection is probably related to the track of a bullet which grazed her head when she was attacked by Taliban gunmen.

Because of the infection, Rosser said, “she is not out of the woods yet.”

A British television channel reported that the hospital was trying to arrange for her to listen to her father on the telephone, though she is currently unable to talk.

“We know there was some damage to the brain, certainly no physical, no deficit in terms of function,” it quoted a spokesman as saying.

A hospital spokeswoman told AFP Malala was 15, not 14 as previously stated.