A paralysed Australian woman, Sonya Smith, underwent a controversial new stem cell treatment in India, and has defied doctors by walking again.

Sonya was paralysed after being crushed by the wheels of her own car. Eighteen months doctors announced that she was a paraplegic, with no feeling below her waist and with no control over her bowel and bladder. Doctors had said her condition would remain like that forever.

However, she underwent pioneering injections of embryonic stem cells and after eight weeks of the treatment in Delhi - treatment that was deemed controversial - Sonya is walking again with the aid of calipers and is beginning to get the sensation back in her legs.

“Everyone that I have spoken to said that I wouldn’t get any feeling or any movement back, even my mother, who from day one has constantly tried to get my head around to accept the fact that this was how I was going to be for the rest of my life,” says she.

Dr Geeta Shroff, who treated Sonya, has not outlined her methods to her medical colleagues outside India. Though concerns remain that the treatment is still unproven and unreliable, Dr Shroff remains convinced it’s a huge medical breakthrough.

“It’s so huge. I mean, for a person who cannot walk to start walking, whether it’s with support or not, a person who has no bladder and bowel, to get that again - medically it’s huge,” Dr Shroff told Sky.

As of now, the medical treatment is being patented and will then become available for medical practitioners to judge whether it works or not.

Source: Money Control