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24th Apr 2019

Woman wakes up from coma 27 years after crash

Simon Lloyd

“I always had a feeling that one day she will wake up”

A woman has woken up from a coma, 27 years after suffering significant damage to her brain after her car collided with a school bus in the United Arab Emirates.

Munira Abdulla was 32 at the time of the road accident, which took place in the city of Al Ain in 1991.

Her four-year-old son Omar, who she had just picked up from school, escaped with just bruising to his head.

Such was the extent of the damage to her brain, doctors doubted Munira would ever be able to open her eyes again. Miraculously, nearly three decades on, she regained consciousness in a German hospital.

“I never gave up on her because I always had a feeling that one day she will wake up,” said Omar, now 32, to UAE newspaper, The National.

Since waking from the coma last year, she has been able to answer questions and even recited some verses from the Quran. Though she is receiving ongoing treatment in Abu Dhabi, she is said to becoming more responsive.

“For years I have dreamt of this moment, and my name was the first word she said,” Dr Ahmad Ryll, her neurologist at Schoen Clinic near Munich, told The National.

Munira received treatment in numerous hospitals while in her coma, including one in London. She was moved to Germany in April 2017 after her family received a state grant from the crown prince court.