BY S KWAGALA
Concerned parties are calling upon the government to prioritise the welfare of individuals suffering hearing impairment issues . These include the partially deaf whose conditions can be rectified by hearing aids but remain stuck at failure to afford or even access the equipment.
Precious Agaba, a victim of hearing impairment as a result of quinine medication in her earlier life , noted that it is a struggle for people of her kind to keep up with the rigourous day to day Communication in the society.
Hearing aids are to make such people’s lives easier than working without them. For instance a child can remain in school with such assistance.
“I struggle to hear because for me to hear ,someone has to speak slowly for me read their lips and loud. Sometimes people look away and the moment they do that , I can not hear them.”
80% of the global need for ear and hearing care needs remains unmet, yet continued unaddressed hearing loss poses an annual cost of nearly 1 trillion US dollars globally.
However, the fact that the problem is silent, not much attention has been paid to it, leaving millions of people around the world living an
undesirable quality of life.
This, according to people living with and caring for those with hearing impairment, needs to change. Sharon Kizito, a mother to a child with hearing impairment says; “Do not exclude them, and where a child needs a hearing aid, support them. Stigma should end now.”
Hearing aids on the market in Uganda according to functionality can range from 100-150 million shillings. The gadgets according to the users are very costly. Gastone Muramira, a Hearing Aids Importer expressed that this pandemic has gone on for long as an invisible disability which needs to change.
According to him, it should be that such gadgets can be accessed in hospital from the point of diagnosis like all other treatments for other conditions.In Uganda , the case is not so, foreign mass campaigns have been a boost for those who have been able to acquire some of these gadgets through donation.
Meanwhile, the longer some of the hearing impairment condition lasts as victims wait to afford the gadgets , the worse some of the conditions get until they are beyond correction according to experts .