Kerstin Fritzl, the young woman whose hospitalisation alerted Austria to its most shocking incest and abuse scandal, has woken up after seven weeks in an induced coma.

The 19-year-old is the daughter of Elisabeth Fritzl and her father Josef, who kept Elisabeth in a home-made dungeon for 24 years.

It was Mr Fritzl who took Kerstin to hospital on April 19, prompting an urgent appeal for her mother to come forward. Kerstin herself had never left the dungeon before and was suffering from multiple organ failure ascribed to a shortage of oxygen.

“The patient Kerstin F. was brought around from her artificial coma and was able to leave the intensive care unit a few days back,” the hospital in Amstetten said in a statement today. “The patient is still in need of intensive medical and therapeutic care.”

Doctors put her into an artificial coma soon after she was taken to the hospital to help stabilise her position.

She is the oldest of the six surviving children from the incestuous relationship between Josef Fritzl and his daughter. Three of the children were raised in the dungeon while the three others were adopted by Mr Fritz and his wife, Rosemarie. Another child, a boy, died a few days after birth.

Prosecutors are investigating the 73-year-old for coercion, rape, incest and the death of the baby, though he has not been charged. Police say he has admitted incarceration and incest.

The hospital Doctors declined comment on a report on the Australian state broadcaster ORF that Kerstin had already been reunited with her mother, her grandmother and her siblings, who are all being cared for at the hospital.

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