Seminar on children with hearing impairment held

CEBU, Philippines - A normal kid learns a word by repeatedly telling it to him at least four to five times, but to a child with hearing impairment, a word takes half a day for it to register in his mind.

Japanese advocates yesterday came to Cebu to conduct a seminar among educators of special children to stress the importance of early identification, habilitation and treatment of young children with hearing impairment or deafness.

A three-day seminar was being organized by the Japan Ear Foster Parent, an organization established in 1992 aiming at supporting the improvement of education and welfare of children with hearing disability in the country.

The seminar includes topic discussions and teaching demonstrations that could be helpful for teachers dealing with hearing impaired kids.

JEFP president Masanori Miyamura said that it is very important that parents would be able to find out as early as infancy that their child has hearing impairment.

“In our country in Japan, we identify the disability as early as possible, provide education, nurture potential possibility of each infant, prevent or reduce the delay in language and communication and social development as much as possible,” Miyamura shared.

He said that these efforts have been made with purpose to promote the normal development of infants and children.

Miyamura said that in their country, they found out that the earlier an impaired kid gets the education, the better a person he or she becomes and the earlier the child acquires the skills needed to find a job for survival.

Dr. Norberto Martinez, a professor from the University of Santo Tomas, said that six per 100 live births have permanent congenital or early onset of hearing loss.

That is about four babies born per minute or 12,000 newborns with hearing loss per year. Most of them were not detected early as deafness is considered an invisible disability.

On August 12 last year, Republic Act 9709 that mandates a universal newborn hearing screening was passed. It provides that it is an obligation of any health worker to inform the parents that a newborn hearing screening is available.

It also mandates that all infants up to three months born in hospitals in the country shall be made to undergo the hearing screening for early detection of hearing impairment.

Equipment for the test are available only in almost 50 hospitals all over the country. However, since it is not free and a large portion of births are done outside the hospital, many are still not able to undergo newborn hearing screening.

Martinez encourages parents to have their newborns undergo screening because early detection could contribute to their better growth.

He shared that babies with higher chances of having hearing loss can be those carried by pregnant women with apgar score of less than five (<5) in five minutes, bacterial meningitis, congenital infection, defects on head and neck, family history, gram weight of less than 1,500 grams and those who had an intake of ototoxic antibiotics.

If one could not afford a screening, there are other ways on how they can detect if a baby can hear sounds depending on their response to sound waves.

Martinez said that if a baby is up to three months, it must startle at a loud sound or noise and may stop moving or crying when called.

From three to six months, a normal baby turns head or moves eyes to a familiar sound. Babies up to 10 months to a year old starts repeating simple words and sounds the people around him make.

At two years, the child must have at least 150 words in his vocabulary. If a child is observed otherwise, parents are advised to consult a doctor. — Jessica Ann R. Pareja/LPM    (FREEMAN NEWS)