Dr Navneet Gupta
World Hearing Day is a campaign held each year by Office of Prevention of Blindness and Deafness of the WHO. Activities take place across the globe and an event is hosted at the World Health Organization on March 3. The campaign’s objectives are to share information and promote actions towards the prevention of hearing loss and improved hearing care. The first event was held in 2007. Before 2016 it was known as International Ear Care Day. Each year, the WHO selects a theme, develops educational materials, and makes these freely available in several languages. It also coordinates and reports on events around the globe. Individuals and communities involved in hearing care are encouraged to organize activities to raise awareness about the importance of ear and hearing care and encourage them to seek services.
Aim is to highlight the importance of safe listening and maintaining good hearing. The main motive is to integrate ear and hearing care within primary care, as an essential component of universal health coverage.
Hearing loss is the most common sensory deficit in humans today. As per WHO estimates, there are approximately 63 million people in India suffering from significant
Auditory Impairment (6.3% of the Indian population. It’s estimated that, by 2050, approximately 900 million people worldwide (or, one in every 10) will have disabling hearing loss. The number continues to grow annually.
Hearing is an important human sense for communicating and connecting with others. Our ears pick up the sounds around us, translate them into nerve signals and transmit them to the brain. This is how we can recognize and understand many sounds like speech, music and noise.
It is hereby suggested that New born Hearing Screening should be mandatory in all Govt and tertiary care hospitals .The Rotary Club of Jammu has taken initiative to fabricate a Van equipped with modern art gadgets for hearing screening of newly born babies.
Suggestions :
Draw attention of decision makers in governments and civil society groups towards the WHO’s recommendations regarding integration of ear and hearing care into PHC.
Encourage governments to integrate primary ear and hearing care into training programmes for health care providers at primary level.
Call attention of primary level health care providers (health workers and physicians) towards the needs of people with hearing loss and ear disease.
Inform people about the importance of ear and hearing care and encourage them to seek services.
World Hearing Day wishes
On the occasion of World Hearing Day, let us give some time to healthy hearing so that we can hear for longer.
If we are going to take care of our hearing abilities from now, we will always have healthy hearing.
With age, it is normal to lose your hearing capacity but by working on it, we can always delay the process.
With so many sounds and noises surrounding us, we must take care of our hearing health in order to be able to hear property.
Hearing is a blessing to us and we must never take it lightly.
Those who cannot hear, they are the ones who know the importance of hearing. Let us take care of it.
The occasion of World Hearing Day reminds us all to take care of our hearing abilities. Let us come together to celebrate the occasion of World Hearing Day. Let us take care of our ears and our hearing abilities. Warm wishes on this day to all.
(The author Assistant Professor, Dept. of ENT at ASCOMS & Hospital, is a renowned Audiologist and Speech Pathologist of J&K UT.)
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