If you have just been told that your baby, toddler, or child has a hearing loss, the news may be a shock. But hearing loss in children is common and, by age 18 years, affects nearly 1 of every 5 children. The majority of deaf children are born to hearing parents who have no previous experience of deafness.
Without hearing rehabilitation, hearing loss can negatively affect speech, language, developmental, educational, and cognitive outcomes in children. However, Dr Ibrahim Salako, an audiologist and a speech-language therapist at the Hear Max Centre, Al-Barakah Plaza, New Bodija in Ibadan, said hearing loss is actually disabling in about 432 million people globally.
He added, “In Nigeria, the most recent data shows about 8.5 million people suffer from this condition. And this data was from as far back as 2018. So now it’s a lot more. Unfortunately, this is a condition that’s much more prevalent in low and middle-income countries like Nigeria due to a lack of a comprehensive healthcare system.”
Specifically, a lot of people, including children, suffer from hearing loss due to misconceptions, mode of delivery, fear of associated risk with screening procedures, preference for traditional medicines, inappropriately designed screening programmes, cost of screening programmes, resource-limited settings, and lack of awareness about risk factors for hearing loss and their effects.
Other studies have found that causes of hearing impairment in Nigeria include neonatal jaundice, febrile illness, birth asphyxia, infections such as mumps, meningitis, or recurrent ear infections, as well as certain medications.
In older children, other causes include head injury, loud noise (including loud music), injuries affecting the auditory nerve, and injury by pencils or other foreign objects that become stuck deep in the ear.
Hearing loss is usually permanent, but it can be treated, and the sooner treatment begins, the better. Unfortunately, there are just two ways to manage permanent hearing loss, which is either through hearing aids or cochlear implant surgeries.
However, cochlear implant surgeries are very expensive and out of reach for many Nigerians. So the option that parents are then left with is hearing aids.”
Dr Salako added, “At Hear Max Centre, we try as much as possible to make hearing aids accessible to people at minimal costs, and payment can be made in installments, particularly for children.”
A lot of people who have children with hearing loss are younger people, and they are still trying to balance their finances. So at Hear Max Centre, we are really focused on supporting individuals who have speech and hearing difficulties to ensure that they achieve their full potential.
Moreover, a hearing-impaired child finds it difficult to concentrate, cannot understand what is going on, has learning problems, and has poor academic activities. The failure to respond to sound may cause a delay in the ability to speak and understand language in young children.
Dr Salako recounted how hearing difficulties and an inability to speak had impacted the full potential of his older cousin, and he had been mistaken for being stubborn and naughty, resulting in him being hit many a time.
“We did not understand what it was, why he couldn’t speak, and why he couldn’t hear when we were speaking to him. Sometimes, when he is called, he does not respond or pay attention. People thought he was stubborn; people thought he was just being naughty, and because of that, he used to get hit once in a while.
“So when I got into the university and I saw what it was firsthand, I thought that, well, this is an opportunity for me to work on diagnosing and treating hearing problems.”
However, Dr Salako said it is expected that all children at birth should be screened for hearing loss so that if there are any issues with their hearing, It can be addressed early enough.
Also, he added, “There are developmental milestones regarding speech development that parents should normally be educated on. If the child is not making the first word within 12 and 18 months, there’s a challenge, and they need to visit an audiologist who then carries out a test to be sure whether this child is hearing or not.”
Without routine hearing tests, there’s a chance that a hearing problem could go undiagnosed for many months or even years.
Hearing tests carried out soon after birth can help identify most babies with significant hearing loss, and testing later in childhood can pick up any problems that have been missed or have been slowly getting worse.
According to him, “There is a gradual reduction in the ability to hear. That is normal; it is natural. So what we advise is that after age 21, it’s best to take a hearing test every five years. When you’re clocking age 40, it’s best to take your hearing test every three years. Above 60, it’s best to take a hearing test at least once a year to quickly catch any decline in hearing and address it early enough.”
Dr Salako said treating reversible causes of hearing loss and ear defects can restore hearing. For example, ear infections can be treated with antibiotics or surgery, earwax can be manually removed or dissolved with ear drops, and cholesteatomas (abnormal growth in the middle ear behind the eardrum) can be surgically removed.
Hearing aids are available for infants as well as older children to compensate for the impairment as much as possible where the child’s hearing loss cannot be reversed.
Hearing is a critical aspect of a child’s social, educational, economic, and cognitive development. However, the effective implementation of the Nigerian health policy on early detection and timely intervention services cannot be carried out without the involvement of the parents and caregivers.
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