Growing Burden of Paediatric Deafness-Challenges in Diagnosis and Rehabilitation in India

Paediatric deafness is a handicap affecting approximately 4–6/1000 newborns. The primary justification for early identification of deafness in children relates to the direct impact on their speech and language development which is further related to the academic, social and emotional impairment and disability. In a developing country like ours, the detected number of pediatric deafness cases may be like a tip of an iceberg as 70% of population lives in rural India where due to lack of basic medical infrastructure facility and social factors most of the cases are unnoticed till the age of 3–4 yrs, when the age of complete speech development occurs. So the delay in detection of deafness is very common amongst general population. Various studies has been done in India in different parts in relation to the incidence, causes, risk factors, etc but being the second highest population in the world, the exact number and percentage of deaf children is difficult to calculate. Various organizations including National programme for detection of deafness are working towards the early identification and rehabilitations measures but we still need to go a long way.