School-age hearing screening impact
While visiting a rural community with our team, a 9 year old girl with a barely audible voice approached us timidly. Although she seemed happy about the crayons we had for all the children, we noticed that something was not right. When we questioned her older brother, he told us that two years ago she accidentally got a stone stuck in her ear and since then she had had trouble hearing. Some days, the pain and discomfort in her ear did not allow her to pay attention at school. The teacher was annoyed without understanding the reason for her poor school performance. Immediately we knew that she was a patient that had to be treated by our staff from the Audiometry Clinic, and shortly after this she was taken to our technician who removed the stone fragments from her ear.
If we reflect on this case and think that it took two long years for this little girl to receive specialized attention, it is sad. She didn´t have to miss those school lessons and play moments with her friends due to her ear discomfort.
For the schools and kindergartens of Santa Rosa de Copán where CAMO is located and the 13 rural schools that are part of the Literature project in the departments (States) of Copán, Ocotepeque, and Lempira, CAMO offers audiological evaluations to detect children with hearing problems. Annually we serve more than 2,500 patients.
This task of providing professional diagnosis to children in different schools is a permanent and we still have a lot to do for those children in rural communities who have learning difficulties related to hearing problems that end up causing school dropout.
This is such important work! In this little girl relieving pain and a health barrier to learning! This is a critically important health service in the 13 schools involved in the CAMO Literacy Program!