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...

Helping provide hearing happiness in Malawi

Children with hearing loss in low-income countries face many obstacles. UK-trained audiologist Chikondi Kuthyola shares her story and Malawi’s strides in cochlear implantation. Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world. In developing countries, deaf children and adolescents...

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...

Cochlear implant care for deaf children in Côte d’Ivoire

Deafness is a global public health problem. More than 1.5 billion people (nearly 20% of the global population) live with hearing loss, and 430 million of them have disabling hearing loss, including 34 million children. In sub-Saharan Africa, nearly eight...

Re-establishing ENT services in Liberia after three decades

Liberia is a country located on the West African coast bordered by Guinea, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast. Founded in 1821, it is Africa’s oldest modern republic and was established on land acquired for freed US slaves by the...

Otorhinolaryngology training in Haiti: a call for accompaniment

Haiti is a small Caribbean country in which a group of freedom fighters successfully defied Napoleon and the French military. It has faced embargoes, economic isolation, political crises and devastating natural disasters since its independence. Its GDP is 0.01% of...

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....

Impact of medical NGOs and a new collaborative approach: the case of Guinea with Mercy Ships

Mercy Ships (MS) is a global Christian charity that follows the 2000-year-old model of Jesus to bring hope and healing to those suffering from disability, disfigurement, and disease. This article by Professor Diallo and Drs Ugai and Conde, details a...