Malala Yousafzai ;The Teenager Left for Dead By The Taliban For Demanding Female Education

A year ago, Malala Yousafzai was a 15-year-old schoolgirl in northwest Pakistan, thinking about calculus and chemistry, Justin Bieber songs and "Twilight" movies. Today she's the world-famous survivor of a Taliban assassination attempt, an activist for girls' education — and a contender to win the Nobel Peace Prize later this week.

Malala's battle for girls' education began when she was barely 11 years old - and at a time when the Taliban roamed freely throughout the valley, blowing up schools, beheading security forces and leaving their dismembered bodies in the town square. On 9 October 2012, Malala was on her way home in the back of a small pick-up truck used to transport the children when a masked man stopped the truck while another shot her in the head with a pistol.Doctors performed emergency surgery but her Malala's condition deteriorated while she was in intensive care, and Pakistani authorities asked a female Doctor Reynolds to help.

"In Peshawar her father had been told by the Pakistani doctors before she arrived to pray for her, and he took that to mean that she was dying. He actually started to make preparations for her funeral," Dr Reynolds said.

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Malala was flown by the military from Peshawar to Rawalpindi, where Reynolds helped to treat her and advised that she be flown overseas for specialist treatment. A week later, Malala awoke at a hospital in Birmingham, England.

Reynolds says there was no loss of pride that Pakistan's "icon" had to go overseas for treatment.

"Absolutely not, they saved her life," she said. "It was the quality of the neurosurgery and the quality of the logistics to move her, first of all from Mingora to Peshawar, from Peshawar to Rawalpindi."

"If they didn't have that infrastructure and technology and that expertise, she would have died," she explained. "So the fact that they've sent her overseas for rehabilitation - they are actually very few places in the world who could have done what's happened to Malala."

Malala gradually regained her sight and her voice, and was reunited with her parents.She also became a world-famous children's campaigner, and is now tipped to be named as the youngest-ever winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. "She's very deserving, she has brought the world's attention to very important issues," said Reynolds. "I'm biased,I think she deserves it, but it's up to the the Nobel Peace Prize committee to decide."