As late identification of hearing problems among the newborns can result in permanent hearing loss, newborn screening has been given a priority. Any delay in the identification causes a hurdle in the successful management of children with hearing loss.
AIISH says global standards prescribe that hearing loss should be confirmed by two months of age and treated by three months of age but the age of identification in India is late (beyond 3 years).
Therefore, AIISH has joined hands with the Department of Health and Family Welfare to educate the medical teams working under Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram (RBSK) and District Early Intervention Centre (DEIC) on early screening of communication disorders in children. With this, newborn screening has been expanded with the number of births being on the rise.
Children born with hearing loss will not develop speech since they don’t hear it and therefore early interventions are a must, experts at AIISH said.
AIISH has developed a dedicated newborn screening system (NBS) through which infants are screened for speech, language and hearing disorders within a few days of their birth at bedside in over 20 hospitals in Mysuru city and 30 outreach service centers. Each month, more than 6,000 newborns are screened through the programme and children at risk for speech, language and hearing disorders are identified well within one month of their birth.
About 3 in 1,000 newborns are known to have permanent hearing loss. These infants typically won’t have any overt signs due to which the hearing loss goes undetected unless a hearing screening test is conducted. It is important to know that hearing loss can be accurately identified right at birth through audiological tests, the institute had said in a press release during the expansion of NBS.
AIISH has collaborated with District Early Intervention Center (DEIC), Mysuru with the aim of conducting newborn screening in the taluk hospitals on a quarterly basis. The AIISH’s team of experts would visit the taluk hospitals on that day to conduct newborn screening and identify at-risk infants.
“By these efforts, more infants and geographical regions would be benefitting from the AIISH’s NBS program. Those identified through this screening program will be treated either in DEIC or AIISH as per the convenience of the patients,” according to AIISH.
Under the newborn hearing screening programme, over 60,000 infants are screened every year using the state-of-art technology within seven days of their birth at the respective hospitals. The newborns who did not pass the screening test were evaluated in detail within two months of their birth to confirm the presence of hearing loss.
