A two-year-old girl who spent 20 minutes under water after falling into a swimming pool has stunned British doctors by making a full recovery in hospital.

Oluchi Nwaubani was playing at a friend's house when she fell into the pool and sank to the bottom.

The toddler spent 20 minutes under water before she was found and rushed to hospital, where doctors gave her just a two per cent chance of survival.

Her parents, from Petts Wood in south London, were told that if she survived she would not be able to move, speak or eat properly.

But after three months of treatment in hospital, Oluchi has made a full recovery.

"The doctors said she would not be able to talk anymore, she would not walk again - she would be a vegetable," Oluchi's father Junior Nwaubani told The Daily Telegraph newspaper in Britain.

"But she is walking, she is eating normally and she is able to say what she wants.

"The doctors said that the amount of time she spent in the water meant she would never recover but when I asked her to say 'hello' to the doctor she tried to speak.

"And then I asked her to wave goodbye and she moved her hand.

"Her doctor said he couldn't believe what he had just witnessed. Staff were calling her a miracle baby."