SHANGHAI - The road ahead of the toddler survivor of the high-speed train crash in July does not look as if it is going to be too smooth.

Rescuers carry Yiyi on a stretcher after they found the girl in the wreckage around 5:15 pm on July 24, 20 hours after a high-speed train accident, in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province. [Photo/Xinhua]

Xiang Weiyi, the 2-year-old girl nicknamed Yiyi, from Wenzhou, East China's Zhejiang province, was rescued from the wrecks 20 hours after a deadly train accident in Wenzhou. Her parents were killed in the accident that claimed 40 lives.

Stuck in the wreckage for a long time, the girl's left leg was badly injured. In August she was transferred from a Wenzhou hospital to Shanghai's Xinhua Hospital for further treatment. Doctors at the earlier hospital feared they would have to amputate her leg.

Following several months' intense treatment, the girl is managing to walk again.

"The recovery of the nerve on her foot was much better than our earlier expectation. Since recovery of the nervous system is of crucial importance, we can expect the motor and sensory functions of her leg to improve gradually," said Du Qing, a doctor from Shanghai Xinhua Hospital's rehabilitation treatment department.

Now that cleaning up of her wounds and the skin grafting on her leg are complete, Yiyi has entered the phase of rehabilitation therapy. Under the rehabilitation plan made by medical experts, the girl has to go through a three-hour training each day, according to Du.

A doctor rewards Yiyi with a snack for responding well to the rehabilitation training in Xinhua Hospital, affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University's School of Medicine, in Shanghai, on Dec 22. [Photo/Xinhua]

"Though she can walk by herself now, the limp cannot be corrected. Her ankle is still not good. So the next step will entail more work on her ankle," Du said.

"Since she has suffered muscle atrophy, increasing the strength of her leg muscle and regaining balance as she stands were essential features of therapy."

Du noted the regeneration of the nerves in her leg was of crucial importance. "It's hard to judge the extent to which the nerve will recover in the future and how much time it would need," she said.

Meanwhile, psychological counseling of the child continues.

"Her grandparents said the girl always asked where her mother and father were, which meant she still hadn't come out of the shadow of the accident," Du said. Yiyi now lives with her grandparents in Shanghai.

Xiang Yuyu, Yiyi's uncle, who is maintaining a blog on Yiyi's progress, wrote in a recent post that although the girl was responding positively to treatment, certain things about her behavior were too complicated to be understood.