Schumacher out of coma, shifted to Swiss hospital

[June 16, 2014]  PARIS/LAUSANNE Switzerland (Reuters) - Formula One ex-champion Michael Schumacher, who sustained severe head injuries in a ski accident in late 2013, is out of a coma and was transferred on Monday from a French to a Swiss hospital to continue rehabilitation, officials said.

"Michael has left the CHU Grenoble (hospital) to continue his long phase of rehabilitation. He is not in a coma anymore," spokeswoman Sabine Kehm said in a statement.

"For the future we ask for understanding that his further rehabilitation will take place away from the public eye," Kehm said of Schumacher, who turned 45 earlier this year.

She did not say what Schumacher's next destination was.

Soon afterwards, a spokeswoman at University Hospital of Lausanne in western Switzerland said Schumacher had been admitted there. "He is here, he arrived this morning," Darcy Christen told Reuters.

Christen declined to say what unit Schumacher, whose family home is in a town between Lausanne and Geneva, was being treated in, citing medical secrecy and family privacy.

The German, who won a record 91 Grand Prix victories and left motor racing in 2013 after a disappointing three-year comeback, bashed his head on a rock while skiing off-piste in the French Alps resort of Meribel on Dec. 29.

(Reporting by Brian Love in Paris and Stephanie Nebahay in Geneva, editing by Mark Heinrich)

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