Thiruvananthapuram: Former Australian cricketer Brett Lee "dreams" of Kerala becoming the first state in the country to make universal newborn hearing screening (UNHS) mandatory.
Interacting with students of National Institute of Speech and Hearing (NISH) at an event held to create awareness on the necessity of conducting a hearing screening on newborn babies, he said that early intervention and knowledge are most vital in tackling hearing disability.
"UNHS is mandatory in Australia. In Kerala, we are getting to that level, and it has to be extended to the private sector," said Mr Lee, who is the Global Hearing Ambassador of hearing aid manufacturer Cochlear.
NISH organised the event in association with Kerala Social Security Mission (KSSM) and Cochlear - a medical device company specialised in implantable hearing solutions globally.
Striking an emotional note, Lee also shared his agony when his five-year-old son suffered a traumatic injury as a result of landing his head on the floor, leading to hearing loss.
"He suffered hearing loss. I was mortified and upset. Those days, he had to move from the back row of the class to the front. Luckily for him, his nerve became alright after some time," he recalled.
"Such an experience made me associate with an initiative that changes the lives of many children."
K. G. Satheesh Kumar, the executive director of NISH, said that UNHS had helped to identify hearing impairment at an early age.
"It has also helped the children with deafness to make significant progress to acquire spoken language," he said.
"Kerala is the first state to provide hearing screening for children in all government centres."
The executive director of KSSM, Mohammed Asheel, said that the Mission had developed software to record and share real-time data of the newborn screened with other institutions.
