Southern States - Karnataka   

Courses in hearing-aid tech. started

By Our Staff Correspondent

MYSORE NOV. 14. The All-India Institute of Speech and Hearing (AIISH) has started diploma courses and a pre-school programme in hearing aid and ear-mould technology.

S.K. Nayak, Union Secretary of Health and Family Welfare, who inaugurated them on Thursday, told the parents of hearing-impaired children not to be disappointed with and discouraged by their disability, and instead take it as a challenge. Promising help to the institute from the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, he said such organisations could help parents overcome the challenge. The pre-school programme was for integrated and all-round growth of hearing-impaired children to make them independent and prepare them for formal education so that the transition from home to school was easier. A multi-sensory approach with a variety of activities to improve the self-help, cognitive, social, motor, sensory, academic, and language skills of children would be adopted for the programme. A specialised curriculum had been prepared for the purpose using a multidisciplinary approach. The programme in different languages would deal with a range of disabilities.

Mr. Nayak said the institute was planning to meet the special needs of disability groups and childhood disorders, and provide training in major Indian languages. The pre-school programme was initiated in 1986, but lack of infrastructure and skilled personnel led to its failure. The programme had been modified into a group therapy one. Children with disorders causing communication problems such as hearing impairment, mental retardation, cerebral palsy, and so on faced difficulty in acquiring language and other skills. They needed the support of professionals and parents. Rehabilitation of such children had been taken up for more than half a century, and it had been realised that they benefited from such programmes if steps were taken from the pre-school period itself. Research on brain development had shown that to maximise a child's intellectual growth, efforts must begin within its first three years of life. This was the period when the brain cell connections were in the developing stages, and things the child learnt during the period left an everlasting impression on it. D. Nagaraja, Director of NIMHANS, released the second volume of "Dissertation Abstracts". The Director of the institute, M. Jayaram, presided over the function.

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