In rural Kenya, 64-year-old John Kamau’s world of silence is about to vary. Isolated from the bustling lifetime of the community and the conversations of his grandchildren for many years as a consequence of hearing loss, he sees hope when he’s visited by a health care employee with a smartphone in his hand.
This is not only any visit; is Kamau’s gateway to reconnecting with the world, facilitated by groundbreaking digital health tools in your smartphone.
The revolutionary smartphone hearing testing app performs a precise assessment and then immediately provides you with reasonably priced, high-quality hearing aids.
Thanks to those hearing aids, programmed to his specific hearing profile via Bluetooth, Kamau can engage in normal conversations and hear the laughter of his grandchildren.
Kamau is one in all many whose lives are being transformed by a high-tech, soft approach: advanced digital technologies delivered by trained community members.
Africa’s silent epidemic
It is estimated that in Africa 136 million people currently suffer from hearing loss and this number is prone to increase 337 million until 2050.
This silent epidemic has profound social and economic consequences, contributing to the global cost of untreated hearing loss estimated at roughly 980 billion dollars annually.
In Africa, the situation is made worse by the drastic shortage of audiologists, of which there’s lower than one every million peopleand the prohibitive cost of hearing aids for many individuals in low- and middle-income countries.
Only 2% people in need of hearing aids in Africa wear them.
There can be a widespread ignorance about this disease.
Revolutionizes access to hearing care
I’m a professor of audiology at the University of Pretoria, where – working with World Health ORganisation and HejX Foundation – we’ve got developed digital devices to check for hearing loss across Africa.
We are pioneers community hearing care Initiatives in low-income communities in Kenya, in addition to in Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, Mbekweni, Atteridgeville and the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa.
1.) Child screening app
We trained local people members to conduct hearing screening tests at early childhood development centers. Nearly 50,000 children were tested at a cost of lower than US$6 per child.
Hearing loss is especially traumatic for kids since it hinders language development and learning and puts them at a lifelong drawback.
Community medical experts are needed minimal training to perform the projection from easy checking app on an Android smartphone and calibrated headphones.
The app monitors noise in real time to be certain that the environment is quiet enough to perform the test. Parents receive a text message with their child’s test results and next steps if further intervention is required.
Social employees may complete vision tests on the same device in lower than three minutes.
2.) Early child development training
We launched a mobile health (mHealth) training program specializing in ear and hearing skills for teachers in early childhood development centers.
Daily multimedia WhatsApp messages train teachers to acknowledge hearing problems. Teachers are taught to evaluate whether a child must go to the front of the class or take a hearing test.
The program has already done this successfully trained 1000’s of teachers across South Africa.
3.) Adult examination
Our collaboration with the World Health Organization led to the creation hear WHO app, the official adult screening tool.
The app includes an easy-to-use test that plays numbers with background noise and asks the user to press those numbers. The test lasted only two to 3 minutes and covered a total of virtually 500 million people 190 countries as of 2019.
The app displays users’ results and maintains a personalized history of their hearing over time. It is accessible in English, Dutch, Mandarin, Russian and Spanish.
4.) Hearing aids for the community
In a recent feasibility study for WHO, we investigated the provision of hearing aids in low-income communities to report recently published WHO guidelines.
Healthcare employees, aided by an artificial intelligence system, analyzed images of the eardrum. If the eardrum looks normal and hearing loss is detected, a hearing aid could be fitted immediately.
We have also partnered with the Clinton Health Access Initiative to expand our screening technology eight countries in Africa and Asia.
As we proceed to deal with the challenges of hearing loss, the path forward is evident: integrating these modern models into existing healthcare systems is imperative.