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'Hark' Hearing for Children in Sierra Leone

27 October 2005

A HARK! Mobile clinic deployed in the field

A HARK! mobile clinic like this will be sent to Sierra Leone

With the aim of assisting the post-war reconstruction of Sierra Leone's health service, the Commonwealth Society for the Deaf (Sound Seekers) is working to improve the lives of deaf children and those suffering from ear disease in that country.

Through co-ordination with the Government of Sierra Leone and the Sierra Leone Society for the Deaf, Sound Seekers is playing its role in improving the health of Sierra Leoneans.

On 19 October 2005 the Society unveiled a mobile screening and treatment clinic, called HARK, at Marlborough House, the headquarters of the Commonwealth Secretariat, in London, UK.

The Land Rover Discovery field ambulance will be equipped with the necessary equipment, and training will be provided to enable comprehensive screening and treatment for children in Sierra Leone suffering from hearing loss and ear disease.

A decade of civil war ended in 2001 after displacing more than 2 million people, almost one-third of the country's population. Since then Sierra Leoneans have had limited access to health service facilities. A lack of functioning immunisation and primary health care programmes has allowed diseases that can cause deafness to run unchecked.

According to the Society's Chair, Dr Ivan Tucker, the HARK programme seeks to move support facilities for the deaf and the potentially deaf out into the community. He said in many countries around the world there is very little facility for deaf people, who are the most isolated of human beings.

"This is an audiological medical facility that can treat medial disease, asses hearing and bring people back to a hospital in a town for further treatment or for the fitting of hearing aids, so that these children can have an opportunity to develop," Dr Tucker explained.

He stated that the programme had made a big impact in Indian and African communities in which outreach facilities are stationed.

While HARK is in operation, Dr Tucker said the Society is in the process of establishing an equipped audiology and ENT unit at the Connaught Hospital in the capital of Sierra Leone, Freetown, which will provide training and enable the screening of both adults' and children's ears for disease and hearing loss.

"People have heard of Sight Savers; well, Sound Seekers is out there as well doing a similar thing at the grassroots level. It is providing specialist treatment to people who cannot afford these treatments. Our vision is humanitarian ... if you cannot communicate, how do you develop your career and get a job? By getting them started earlier we can identify children who are deaf at an early age. This mobile facility is giving us the start that we need in reaching these children," Dr Tucker stated.

At the end of the Sierra Leone project, ten nurses will be given training in audiology, five of whom will remain permanently with the project.

CNIS - Commonwealth News and Information Service Issue 258, 26 October 2005