Children receive hearing aids

Rejoyce Sibanda, Chronicle Reporter

THE Hear to Aid Foundation Trust in partnership with The Ear Centre in Bulawayo has rolled out a campaign to sponsor 100 underprivileged children below 18 years with hearing aids.

Hundreds of children have benefited from the programme countrywide since it started in 2018 and about 100 have been targeted in Bulawayo.

The programme is part of the foundation’s annual hearing loss assessment campaigns, conducted in selected areas around the country. 

Formalised in 2018, the foundation is a Zimbabwe-based trust which was formed by a couple; Dr Nicolai Pedersen a Danish audiologist and Jenny Pedersen a Zimbabwean-Danish audiologist supported by five international board members.

Since 2013, the founders have been offering services ranging from hearing tests and infection management to rehabilitation through hearing aids.

It is the first time that Hear to Aid Foundation Trust is partnering with Bulawayo-based The Ear Centre to provide help to Bulawayo.

Some of the foundation’s campaigns have been done at Gonarezhou Clinic, Kambuzuma Clinic, Victoria-Falls and Hwange.

Mr Mkhonzeni Duduza Sibanda, a clinical audiologist and managing director at The Ear Centre said children had to go through various processes for detecting hearing loss.

“We had an overwhelming response to this programme and we got more than the targeted number. The children undergo examinations to find out if there are no infections or blockings in the ear. 

“Screening is also done to determine whether there is hearing loss or not and then the rest of the procedures are done to address the results that would have been obtained,” said Mr Sibanda.

Dr Jenny Pedersen, the founder and chief executive officer of Hear to Aid Foundation, said that she was grateful for The Ear Centre to have sacrificed their space for the programme.

She said a number of people with hearing challenges are not able to meet the costs of the hearing aids which necessitated them to come on board.

“It is a good initiative that we started in terms of helping out most underprivileged children because I have noted that most people afford to pay for hearing tests but they do not afford to pay for hearing aids. Thus, this is where our help comes in, in making sure that such people get assisted by our Foundation Trust,” said Dr Pedersen.

She said signs of hearing loss are speech delay, struggle to hear and also struggle at school.

Dr Pederson said the condition can also be detected in young babies around nine months old. 

“Delayed speech is a major sign in hearing loss. Some of the children fall under the category whereby whatever they are speaking would not be clear. Babies around nine months stop babbling if they are experiencing hearing loss and thus mothers have to pay attention to such. Since there is no central registry for everything here, we have been working with the trust that parents who had to wait upon such a day like this means that they had no other options but bring their children here to get assisted by us,” said Dr Pedersen.

Various age groups of children attended the screening exercise to benefit from the programme with the youngest child being one year six months old while the oldest was 16 years old. 

Hear to Aid Foundation’s main partner is Great Northern Store Nord Company that covers most of the costs and donates hearing aids.

The foundation is also in partnership with Love for Africa and The Ear Centre.

“Our focus in the next five years is in building infrastructure so that the trained teams have permanent places to operate from. It would also be nice to have locations with permanent buildings to have their own people being assisted there than having them travel long distances to get assistance and also having them to wait for a specific date like this one,” Dr Pedersen                                                                                     said.

She said the organisation is looking to recruit volunteers to boost manpower as the eight member staff is not able to deal with the huge turnout. 

“Once a child has been assisted by Hear to Aid Foundation, they are now under our care. The children are also assisted with all the medication and instrumentation that they need. A location is revisited for further assessments so that the children get maximum help,” said Dr Pedersen. – @ReeSibanda.