World Hearing Day: Are you listening?

Shraddha Keny Dcunha

World Hearing Day (WHD) is held on 3 March every year. Hearing is one of the five senses human beings are gifted with and use it to listen to various sounds, speech, enjoy music. Importantly, communication is based on good or normal hearing.

Every year is celebrated with a theme which the World Health Organisation (WHO) decides and develops advocacy materials to raise awareness on deafness and promotes ear and hearing care across the world.

Hearing care for all – screen, rehabilitate, communicate is the theme for 2021.

This year the objective of WHO is to draw attention towards the importance of early identification and intervention of hearing loss. 

Many people do have a hearing loss of various degree and types. These people cannot hear soft sounds, need to ask for repetition or speak to loudly or it’s difficult for some to understand speech from a distance.

At times, they or their family members do not know whom to contact. Due to these problems, their communication gets hampered. They tend to stop socialising, meeting people, feel left out. 

Some studies show that hearing loss contributes to memory loss up to a certain extent. There are around 360-million people with disabling hearing loss, 32-million are children worldwide.

If a child is born with hearing loss then her/his overall development gets adversely affected as the child grows.  Child’s speech and language development gets affected, the child may show articulation errors in speech or may not learn to speak at all. Educational and social progress gets affected and thus the child’s overall personality maybe get deviated from normal. But if the child is identified at the earliest, then , the best rehabilitation measures can help her/him get close to normal standards and reduce the adverse impact on her/his development.

So for, any ear issues like pain, pus and wax accumulation, One needs to visit an ENT specialist. For any hearing issue, one needs to visit a qualified audiologist.

Hearing test (audiometry) is conducted as a basic test. Based on result, person is reffered for medical or surgical treatment to ENT specialist. Also hearing aid usage is suggested for a certain patients. Even a few months old babies can be diagnosed with hearing loss using certain tests and steps towards rehabilitation can be taken as early as possible if the baby is diagnosed with hearing loss.

The key message of 2021 theme is: Good hearing and communication are both important to lead a normal life.

Hearing loss can be avoided through prevention. Ears can be protected against loud sounds and good ear hygiene can be maintained among other things. Hearing loss can be tackled at a very early stage or as soon as one has doubt about self.

One in three people over 65 years are affected with disabling hearing loss. Some of the causes of hearing loss are – exposure to loud noise; ototoxic medication; meaning, some drugs can cause hearing loss; unattended ear discharge or infections, particularly in children; illness, trauma or viral fever, and old age.

Sixty per cent of childhood hearing loss can be prevented through public awareness. Persons with hearing loss can benefit from properly chosen and fitted hearing aid by an audiologist. Beware of unqualified people dispensing hearing aids under the garb of being audiologists.

One should not be ashamed to talk about their hearing loss with family members or doctors and then proceed to take necessary action.

Governments of each state should start ‘early identification’ programmes with newborns, in maternity and children's hospitals with few mandatory hearing screening tests. This will help reduce hearing disability in future.

Remember, any person with hearing loss has the right to a good life irrespective of the problem provided it is addressed at the earliest, and in a proper manner.

( The writer is an audiologist at Pancham Hearing Care)