Introduction

More than 5% of the world’s population has disabling hearing loss, this translates to about 360 million people. According to a survey done by Britain Nepal Otology Services (BRINOS) with Tribhuwan University Teaching Hospital (TUTH), 16.6% of the Nepalese population suffers from hearing disability, 7.4% has ear drum pathology, and 32% of hearing loss is found to be due to infection of the middle ear; this proportion is among the highest in the South East Asia region. Sadly, 55.2% of the population diagnosed with deafness in school going age group is due to preventable causes.

The causes of hearing loss in more than 50% of these children is due to preventable conditions like discharging ear, use of drugs that is toxic to hearing, instillation of various traditional herbs inside the ear. Discharging ear is considered a normal problem among the Nepalese population due to ignorance about the disease. If left untreated it can cause life threatening conditions like Meningitis, Brain abscess and even death. Hearing impairment is particularly serious in children because it can lead to communication difficulties, delayed educational progress and social isolation, which can lead to life long burden in the society.

Deafness is an invisible disability as those affected look normal, unlike in other forms of disability, so they suffer silently in a traditional conservative society like ours. The far reaching implications of hearing loss in development of language, communication skill, social life and professional life is huge, and warrants urgent prevention/treatment of hearing loss on time. Due to lack of adequate number of trained specialists across Nepal and lack of awareness about the disease, the prevalence of ear disease is very high especially in rural areas. Ear Care Nepal’s main focus is to help this special under privileged group of people to overcome their disability.