Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s Listening for Life Centre has marked World Hearing Day (3 March) by highlighting its contribution to promoting ear and hearing care across the world.
The landmark, hi-tech centre of excellence is home to the Trust’s cochlear implant technology which helps transform the lives of patients not just in Bradford but further afield in Africa.
Ear, Nose and Throat surgeon, Professor Chris Raine MBE, said:
This year’s World Hearing Day theme is ‘Ear and hearing care for all.’ Hearing is one of our most precious senses as it is essential for maintaining relationships and connections with friends and family, fully participating in team and community activities and experiencing life events.
Hearing makes it possible to engage, laugh, listen and enjoy many of the things that help to shape your quality of life.
The World Health Organisation has highlighted how ear and hearing problems are among the most common problems encountered in the community – yet over 60 per cent of these can be identified and addressed at the primary level of care. So I would urge anyone who might be concerned about their hearing to check with their GP or local pharmacy or opticians – many of whom offer hearing tests, which in some circumstances are free.
Besides the team’s work here in Bradford – they also carry out vital charity work in Malawi where surgeons and audiologists have a long, established history of providing support, equipment and running teaching and educational workshops and procedures for medical and audiology professionals.
Malawi has only two audiology centres in the capital, Lilongwe, and in the country’s second largest city, the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) in Blantyre.
Chris continued:
Malawi has a population of 20 million people but there is only one consultant, two registrars and 40 clinical officers.
To put that in context, we have 10 consultants for less than one million people and more audiometers at the Listening for Life Centre than they have for the whole of Malawi.
People have very limited access to ENT and general health care and here in Bradford we want to do all we can to help and to highlight the importance of prevention.
Malawi is the fourth poorest country in the world and they need our support and my colleagues and I go out on a regular basis to help improve their ENT work.
Previously, Chris and his wife, Anne, the Ear Trust and the Rotary Club of Bradford West donated 16 boxes of equipment to the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) in Blantyre.
Donations included audiometers, surgical instruments, tracheostomy tubes, monitor screens, lights, anaesthetic equipment, theatre clothing, cameras, endoscopy and otology equipment, as well as trays and cables.
FACTFILE:
- Last year, the Listening for Life Centre team completed 120 cochlear implant operations on children and adults.
- They also provided audiology and rehabilitation sessions to implanted patients at the centre, in schools and homes.
- There are around 26 professionals in the team ranging from surgeons, audiology scientists, teachers of the deaf, speech and language therapists, rehabilitation support workers, audiology technical officers and administration officers.