Your old Hearing Aids could help more children to hear

Richard Moss RHAD, FSHAA, MRSH, founder of The Oxford Hearing Centre, has just returned from an orphanage in Baia Marie, northern Romania, where he has been helping transform the lives of a group of hearing impaired orphans.

Locally Richard leads a team of hearing aid specialists at The Oxford Hearing Centre who use advanced digital mapping to assess exactly how individuals hear in different listening environments. This technology is then used to tune the latest miniaturized digital hearing aids to suit the individual wearer’s needs. Such advanced hearing instruments are not currently available via the NHS.

The team of hearing aid specialists has had such amazing results with their clients at The Oxford Hearing Centre that they now see people with hearing problems from all over the country who are keen to embrace the latest advancements in hearing aid technology.

This demand for new technology led Richard to realise that rather than discarding old hearing aid equipment it could perhaps be put to use for hearing impaired individuals in less fortunate circumstances.

Richard explored how the Oxford Hearing Centre might help hearing impaired youngsters in deprived areas across the world and this led to him joining forces with the Charity, Hope Romania to bring the same level of care to a group of hearing impaired children in a deprived region of Romania where there was virtually no access to professional help or quality hearing aids.

Richard Moss takes up the story;

“We have now been making trips to Romania for some years so each trip we’re seeing a mix of new children and checking up on the progress of others. It’s amazing, and heart warming, to see the difference we can make.”

In this area corruption means that few poor or orphaned children ever receive audiological care and so Hope Romania, working with The Oxford Hearing Centre, has helped short circuit the system to bring help directly to the children who need it.

“It’s impossible not to be deeply affected by the plight of these children and by the hope our care and technology can bring to them,” says Richard. “Many of the children we see have been rescued from the streets and we can, quite literally, help to change their lives.”

Richard had the support of leading Swiss hearing aid manufacturer, Phonak, who he has persuaded to supply some hearing aids to children on the programme but, vitally, Richard was also able to dispense a number of aids donated to him at The Oxford Hearing Centre.

“Although these donated aids may have been superseded in the UK,” says Richard, “In Romania they can still be put to marvellous use with the children. I’m sure I don’t have to explain how important it is to help children with hearing impairment while they are as young as possible – hearing, of course, plays a vital role in learning and socialising.”

The team managed to see 22 Children in just one day and supply and fit a lot of the instruments that had been donated from clients and companies in England and Richard will be returning to Romania again in October 2007 to ensure the children are still hearing well and to fit new aids. And so he has made this appeal:

APPEAL

If you, or someone you know, have any unwanted hearing aids, please contact

The Oxford Hearing Centre on 01865 861861 and help more children to hear and lead a fuller and more rewarding life.

Thank you.


For further information concerning Hope Romania www.hoperomania.org