Global Health
Empowering hearing rehabilitation professionals in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia
The Hearing Healthcare Alliance empowers professionals across Africa and Asia through comprehensive training programmes, improving local hearing rehabilitation services. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 430 million people worldwide require rehabilitation for disabling hearing loss [1]. This number...
ENT and audiology in the Land of a Thousand Hills
Rwanda is a beautiful country known as the ‘Land of a Thousand Hills’. It is located in the Great Rift Valley in East Africa and shares borders with Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, all offering direct...
Developing ENT and audiology services in Southern Africa (Part 2)
In the last issue of ENT & Audiology News, we heard from retired Professor Christopher Prescott on the challenges faced and progress made made locally to address the inequity and inequality of access to ENT and allied health professional services...
Developing ENT and audiology services in Southern Africa
Much has been said of the paucity of ENT and its related services in low- and middle-income countries. This article from a retired paediatric otolaryngologist discusses the progress that has been made locally to redress these health inequalities. He has...
Prof Tanon of the Côte d’Ivoire and Stephanie Unterrieder of MED-EL: challenges and successes of a public-private partnership
The Côte d’Ivoire (RCI) is a large country on the West African coast. It has recently launched a pioneering neonatal hearing screening programme. Dr Cheka Spencer caught up with Prof Marie-Josée Tanon to discuss this and other recent developments which...
In conversation with Dr Narveshwar Sinha
‘Only if you hear, you speak’ – early diagnosis of deafness On the occasion of World Hearing Day, Vikas Malik interviewed Narveshwar Sinha, Chairman of IDEAL Charity, a UK-based charity working for the hearing impaired in less developed countries for...
Public Health Planning for Hearing Impairment (2022)
The World Report on Hearing, published in 2021 by the WHO reports that 430 million people in the world have moderate or worse hearing loss, all of whom require rehabilitation [1]. Over 1.5 billion have any degree of hearing loss....
Advances in ear and hearing telehealth
Telehealth in ear (or tele-otology/tele-audiology) and hearing care has steadily increased as an area of both research and clinical interest over the past 15 years [1]. Driven by rapid advances in connected technologies and wide-ranging potential use cases, telehealth had...
Charitable hearing care in Pakistan: establishing the IMRA Cochlear Implant Programme and Middle Ear Project
IMRA, the International Medical Relief Agency, is a registered charity providing volunteer-delivered cochlear implant and major ear surgery to children and adults in Pakistan. Established in 2001 by UK-based ENT surgeons led by Mr Haroon Khan, its primary aim is...
Cambodian Children Surgical Centre: a junior’s perspective
The Children’s Surgical Centre (CSC) is a Non-Governmental-Organisation (NGO) hospital situated in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. CSC was developed for landmine victims over 20 years ago by Dr Jim Gollogly after the dark period under the Pol Pot...
In conversation with Robin Youngs
Members of ENT UK (The British Association of Otolaryngologists and Head and Neck Surgeons) have a long tradition of humanitarian work in countries in Africa and Asia (see article with Professor Davis Howard in previous issue for example). The ENT...
Breaking barriers in Uganda: the story of Elaine Mukaaya
More than 9% of sub-Saharan Africa’s one billion people live with disabling hearing loss, with children having among the highest rates of childhood hearing loss in the world [1]. Sadly, in concordance with the inverse care law – proposed by...
