“Deafness across the country begins for many people, sadly, not through injuries, repeated exposure to loud decibel of sounds from the ubiquitous ‘boom boom’ boxes or industrial noise but from the womb” Dr. Ruth Quaicoe, Audiological Physician at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) explained in an interview last week, on the subject of deafness.
According to a media release from the Department of Public Information (DPI), the US-based firm Starkey Hearing Foundation which has donated large sums of money to the audiological sector to help restore hearing among Guyanese, and in the past two years has presented some 700 hearing aids to Guyanese, will return this week to donate another 400 to hearing-impaired persons. The team will visit the Fort Wellington Hospital, Region Five (Mahaica/Berbice) today, and will be at the Sophia Exhibition Centre tomorrow. The hearing devices come with a lifetime warranty and free batteries for each recipient, and Dr Quaicoe hopes that future visits by Starkey will target other regions, where residents also desperately need their hearing restored.
Twenty years ago the Audiology Department of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) embarked on a campaign against deafness and internal social isolation, the DPI statement said. Every child born at the GPHC, is subjected to an automated optoacoustic emission (AOE) screening within the first 24 hours of birth, a test which is repeated within the first three months to ascertain the final diagnosis.
Babies born with a
