Inside State plan to lower cost of hearing aids, initiate early care

Counties will now be able to order hearing aids for the deaf from the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority.

The Ministry of Health on Thursday revealed that it had already made specifications for the hearing aids after it included them in the list of essential medicines and supplies last year.

Director of Clinical Services at the Ministry of Health Manasseh Bocha said the list was revised last year after it was realised that the previous one did not include hearing aids and other disability requirements.

The previous list did not include ear and hearing commodities like the hearing aids but the approved list last year has included those including batteries so those are the commodities that are going to be found in Kemsa,” Bocha said.

“We have already done the specifications in such a manner that the county hospitals and national facilities when they are ordering commodities from Kemsa can also order these items to be available in our hospitals,” he noted.

Bocha was speaking during the launch of the Kenya Society for Deaf Children (KSDC) Dechi Hearing Centre in Upper Hill.

The DECHI Hearing Centre will operate as a level 2 Clinic,  not only offering outpatient services but also referral services to major hospitals if the situation demands inpatient or surgical care.

The centre can handle most cases of hearing challenges from Clinical to audiological among children, adults and the elderly.

In addition, it will be in a position to handle patients with nose and throat challenges, giving full ENT care.

Bocha said the ministry plans to set up a wellness centre in every maternity across the country for screening of newborns to ensure the cases are picked early.

Healthcare workers will also be trained to ensure they are able to identify any hearing problems at an early age, with a focus being on setting up an ear and hearing centre in every Subcounty hospital.

“We are also going to train the Community Health Promoters to identify these cases early from the village, some children are born in the village so we will train them with simple technologies like clicking of the hand, that one does not require rocket science,” he said.

According to the KSDC chairperson Francis Ng’ang’a, the prevalence rate of deafness in Kenya is 6.3 per cent, translating to over three million Kenyans with mild, moderate, severe, or profound hearing loss.

Within this demographic, 900,000 individuals are classified as profoundly deaf, and 300,000 fall within the school-age bracket.

However, only 20,000 of school-going age are currently enrolled in educational institutions, adding that Kenya has 141 schools specifically catering to the needs of the deaf.

“We have also established from research, that the majority of deafness and hearing loss is acquired rather than hereditary,” Ng’ang’a said.

“This therefore means that the majority of hearing loss is preventable. It calls for huge public awareness creation on the causes and on how to avoid hearing loss,” he added.

He noted that despite a recent heightened focus on the issue of deafness, the category has largely been plagued by under-support and under-funding with the challenges facing the deaf still largely unresolved and not in the mainstream focus of the national conversation space.

He further raised concern that sign language is still yet to be scaled while many of the children are still unable to attend school.

Legislators who were present during the launch of the clinic have urged the government to remove import duty on hearing aid batteries to ensure they are accessible and affordable to the deaf.

They have raised a concern that the current duty on batteries creates a financial barrier and makes them unaffordable to many deaf people.

They further want the government and partners to come up with a way of ensuring the cost of hearing aids is lowered.

Currently, it is estimated that hearing aids cost as high as Sh67,000, making them out of reach for many people who need them for communication and independence.

“We must remove the import duty on hearing aids batteries, this is not a luxury but a necessity for promoting inclusion and accessibility,” Nominated MP Dorothy Muthoni said.

“The cost of hearing aids is prohibitive, we need to see how we can bring it down. Not everyone can afford that Sh67,000 and once it gets spoilt you cannot even make it,” Imenti North MP Dawood Rahim said.

Also present include Kenya National Union of Teachers SG Collins Oyuu and his KUPPET counterpart Akello Misori.