Michael Schumacher 'responding to his wife's voice'

The Formula One champion, 45, was on Monday transferred from Grenoble university hospital, where he had been treated since his accident last December, to a rehabilitation clinic in the Swiss city of Lausanne.His manager, Sabine Kehm, said he was no longer in the artificial coma that the driver had been placed in since early January and would begin the “long process” of rehabilitation in the Lausanne clinic which is some 20 miles from the driver’s home in the nearby Swiss village of Gland.According to reports in Germany’s Bild newspaper, Schumacher has lost a total of 44lbs (20 kilograms) while undergoing treatment, although physiotherapists have been giving the driver regular exercise treatment to keep his muscles active.Schumacher was also said to be able to breathe without assistance for unspecified periods. His is also able to respond to voices around him, particularly that of his wife, Corinna.“The voice of Corinna has a much stronger effect on him than the voices of other people,” Bild wrote.Dr Martin Grond, a brain specialist interviewed by Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine, has said it would be “irresponsible” to attempt to offer a prognosis concerning Schumacher's chances of making a full recovery. He said the driver’s team had released too little information about his medical condition to make accurate predictions.“There is not a word mentioned about brain function,” Dr Grond told the magazine. He said Schumacher could be in any state ranging from a “waking coma” to being “on his way to recovery”.(telegraph.co.uk)Bakudaily.az