My first Magazine EDUCARE MAGAZINE SPECIAL NOVEMBER EDITION 2019 | Page 23

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23
USING SMARTPHONE TO
SCREEN YOUNG CHILDREN
FOR VISION AND HEARING LOSS
H
ealthy hearing and vision in
early childhood are the
foundation for success at
school. Hearing and vision
difficulties are the most common
developmental disabilities in children
younger than 5 years, with more than 40
million affected globally. But more than
90% of children with hearing or vision
loss live in low and middle-income
countries where services to detect
problems early are unavailable.
Called invisible disabilities hearing and
vision loss cannot be identified without
conducting a test. These tests, especially
for hearing, have traditionally needed
expensive equipment and trained health
professionals such as audiologists.
Without systematic screening
programmes these losses go undetected
until children reach school age where
they often have a devastating impact on
development, academic outcomes, and
socio-emotional well-being.
Over the last six years, I've been
working with colleagues around the
world to develop, implement and
evaluate a number of hearing care
models that can be delivered in
communities using smar tphone
technologies and facilitated by minimally
trained people. We've been targeting
poor communities in particular.
The minimally trained people that we
worked with included lay community
members, community health workers,
community care workers, and even
teachers. They provided hearing-related
services such as awareness programs,
hearing screening, referral, follow-up
and diagnostics in the children's homes,
preschools, schools and in clinics. In
2016, we introduced vision screening in a
pilot project demonstrating the
feasibility and value of combined
screening.
Our most recent implementation study
evaluates a service-delivery screening
project in low-income communities by
A community health worker screening a child's hearing in Cape Town. Ora Buerkli
Educare November 2019
Educare November 2019