Monday, September 28, 2009

World deaf day

Today was world deaf day.Mrs Hudlikar had arranged for a meeting with a reporter of news paper to come and see for himself how it was possible for the deaf to speak through speech therapy.I am attaching the link of the news paper called DNA.

4 comments:

  1. What a great article! Hopefully parents will read the article and know about early intervention and hearing aids. I was wondering, are cochlear implants common in India? Nolan has a lot of residual hearing so does not need one, but I was wondering if they were available to children with very profound hearing losses in your area.

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  2. Thanks Leah.This is precisely the reason for me start the blog- awareness! In India it is lacking severely due to various reasons.CI is available and but most parents can't afford it. Plus the implant is being used more as a benefit for themselves by the doctors and audiologist. Not much is being made available as far as information and is concerned.Even the children with less loss are being asked to go for CI. Plus the speech therapy which is the soul of any of these programmes is not being emphasized upon. We have seen such horror stories of implant that I am very against it.We have kids with profound loss, wearing aids and doing so well choosing various careers in computer science, engineering, etc. I have been asked by various people to go in for CI as she speaks well.They cannot believe that Prisha has severe to profound loss and has good speech.Without giving a chance to work with aids[ which is mandatory] and see if aids are suitable, the audiologists suggest CI within a week of diagnosing deafness.It is a scam and so lot of people are skeptical about it.The transparency is missing in India.

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  3. Great job Rouchi and a great article. I hope and pray that a lot of people read it.

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  4. Ah, in the USA it is much different. Parents are required to try hearing aids for at least six months before obtaining a cochlear implant. It is only when the hearing aids are shown to be of little or no benefit that a cochlear implant is considered- and then there is a difficult candidacy process to go through to obtain one (they do in depth hearing tests, psychological assessments, etc). Plus, most centers make the parents verify the children are receiving good speech services so that they can get good benefit out of the implant.

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