Dr Rao’s ENT in association with TASLPA and WHO has successfully organized “Walkathon for Early Intervention“, an initiative to create awareness about early screening and prevention of hearing issues and to promote hearing wellness.
The WHO estimates that over 360 million people globally (accounting to more than 5 percent of the world’s population), live with disabling hearing loss. 32 million of these are children.
Children with hearing loss are at risk of not only lifelong deficits in speech and language acquisition, but also poor academic performance, personal-social maladjustments and emotional difficulties. Any delay in auditory stimulation or reduced auditory signal during critical optimal developmental stage may cause permanent, irretrievable reassignment of auditory brain cells and scavenging of visual cortex. Hearing is a brain function and a baby’s brain is “pre-wired” to accept and process sound.
The founder and director of the Thirty Million Words Initiative, Professor Dana Suskind, explains why the most important thing a parent can do for their child’s future success is to talk to them. Thirty million words is what typical hearing child gets exposed to by the age of 3. There is thus limited window period for children who are hearing impaired to catch-up to their normal hearing peers. This is why every day matters.
Findings from LOCHI at 5 years revealed a significant effect of early cochlear implantation in children born with profound hearing loss, showing that on average, 5-year language score was 1.4SD higher for a child who received an implant at 6 months, compared to a child who received an implant at 24 months. In a similar vein, there was a significant effect of early hearing aid fitting.
About 2 or 3 every 1,000 children in US are born with some degree of hearing loss.Newborn Hearing Screening is one of the first steps to set a child on path for success. American Academy of Pediatrics endorses the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EDHI) 1-3-6 guidelines, which recommends:
- Hearing screening no later than 1 month of age
- Diagnosis no later than 3 months of age
- Entry into early intervention services no later than 6 months of age.
Watch the press coverage in TV5 –
To create awareness about the importance of early detection of hearing issues and to prevent lasting effect on us, Dr Rao’s ENT successfully organized a Walkathon on March 01, 2020. Honorable Minister for Health of Telangana state, Sri Etela Rajender garu graced the event and appreciated the efforts made by Dr GVS Rao garu and our hospital towards achieving the objective of making Telangana the No.1 state in health in India.
Press coverage of the event –
