Why Hearing Matters

hearing impairment impact

Impact of Hearing Impairment
Hearing impairment impact leads to loss of normal verbal communication. Differentiation of environmental sounds, including speech is difficult due to distortion of sounds.

Hearing affects communication of the people. Thus leads to inefficiency in the employment in case of younger people. Older people lose emotional bonding with their families. Children or infants won’t be able to speak apart from hearing disability. All these people contribute to a huge economic burden to the county.

With one side hearing impairment also, there will be difficulty in understanding direction of the sound and reduced speech discrimination in noisy environment.

Hearing loss is a big problem in India

With the present set of concept of hearing disability, the Census of India, 2001 counted 1,261,722 people in whom hearing disability existed (Males 53.4% and Females 46.59%). A majority of persons with hearing disability were identified in rural India (81.06%)- Rehabilitation Council of India.

To low income people, hearing care remains inaccessible because of the high cost of hearing aids. And, also because of inadequate treatment facilities and lack of trained professionals to fit hearing aids. As a result, less than 1 among 40 hearing impaired people in India who need a hearing aid has access. MAURYA Foundation aims to make remaining 39 people come to the mainstream.

People with hearing impairment constitute a significant portion of our population who can be contributing citizens. Efforts to provide diagnostic and treatment services make them to mainstream population. This results in creating a barrier-free and rights-based society for persons with disabilities.

Hearing loss has serious consequences to the Economy

The WHO estimates that hearing impairment costs the global economy $750 billion each year as a result of decreased productivity, unrealized tax revenue and expensive disability services. For developing countries like India, this financial strain represents yet another obstacle to rising out of poverty and also significant that the same amount can be used to other developmental activity.

Untreated hearing loss represents an enormous burden to the society.