NE HEALTH BUREAU
NEW DELHI, MAR 3
India’s recently concluded study on hearing loss and its causes showed that disabling hearing loss affected 2.9 percent of the population and was noted to affect communication, education, and work, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Wednesday.
“The rural population had a far greater prevalence of hearing loss. The prevalence of total hearing loss, unilateral and bilateral was found to be as high as 9.93 percent,” said Vardhan, who as Chairman of WHO Executive Board released WHO”s World Report on Hearing on the World Hearing Day.
To underscore the importance of ear health, Vardhan referred to a 2018 WHO report which observed that 2 percent of India’s population, mainly children, suffer from the condition of otitis media, the Health Ministry said in a statement.
Otitis media is a group of inflammatory diseases of the middle ear.
“So prevalent is the condition that some people even consider it natural for a child’s ears to discharge,” he was quoted as saying in the statement.
He also highlighted other problems like hearing loss due to high noise levels at workplaces and on the roads, hearing loss due to the use of ototoxic medicines and chemicals, the dangers of loud music, and unsafe listening to people’s hearing health (with over 750 million smartphone users in India).
He informed the audience on India’s recently concluded study on hearing loss and its causes in the population, the statement said.
“A multi-centric cross-sectional survey conducted as per the WHO recommended Probability Proportional to Size (PPS) sampling technique assessed 92,097 people in the community across six sites in India.
“Age-appropriate audiological testing as per WHO norms, including pure tone audiometry, tympanometry, otoacoustic emissions, behavioral observation audiometry, and ENT examination, were all undertaken onsite in a specially designed sound-treated audiological bus,” he said.
The sample size makes this the world’s largest such study to date. The results have shown a changing profile of hearing loss in India’s population and in tune with similar changes in other countries as they move forward in economic development.
“The study showed that the disabling hearing loss affected 2.9 percent of the population and was noted to affect communication, education, and work.
“The rural population had a far greater prevalence of hearing loss. The prevalence of total hearing loss, unilateral and bilateral was found to be as high as 9.93 percent,” he said.
The geriatric population accounted for 40.5 percent of all hearing loss and 72.4 percent of all disabling hearing loss. The study also made a major contribution in identifying the risk factors associated with Sensory Neural Hearing Loss (SNHL): smokeless tobacco consumption, heavy smoking, leisure, and work-related noise, and also excessive residential noise, which are all noted as risk factors associated with SNHL.
Vardhan showcased India”s National Programme for Prevention and Control of Deafness to the audience that targets six percent of the population who have disabling hearing loss and require interventions, the statement said.
The program (launched in 2006) focuses on preventing hearing loss, especially that which is caused by ear infections and noise; early identification of deaf babies and hard of hearing persons; timely provision of suitable interventions and services like medicines, surgery, hearing devices, and rehabilitation. More than 30,000 free-of-cost ENT surgeries and around 24,000 hearing aids were provided under the program in the year 2019-20.
“With an annual implementation budget of Rs 35 crore, funded fully by Government of India, the national programme for prevention and control of deafness now covers 595 districts in the country, reaching nearly 80 percent of the country’s population and is growing every year,” he was quoted as saying.
Vardhan also informed the audience that with the COVID pandemic abating in India, the government plans to further strengthen the work on the ear and hearing care based on the recommendations of the report by improving services at community and primary levels through training of health workers for task sharing, in line with the strategies outlined in the report.
It also plans to expand access to affordable hearing technologies for all those in need and use the power of Information Technology (IT) to raise awareness among the youth on safe listening as a means of hearing loss prevention.
