KOZHIKODE: Health Minister K.K. Shailaja has said that the Kozhikode Government Medical College will be raised to international standards soon. Inaugurating the renovated centre for audiology and speech pathology at the college here on Tuesday, she said "the new centre has adopted the latest technology for the audiology and speech pathology treatment. This will be adopted in all the other departments of MCH," she added.
The centre has enough space to handle the increasing rush of patients for cochlear implant conducted as part of the special government project 'Sruthitharangam.' Dr Muraleedharan Namboothiri, head of the department of ENT, said, "more than half the number of patients coming to the hospital with cochlear implant gets the treatment with the facilities available under the Sruthitharangam project."
The facility is located in the 4,000 square-feet area on the sixth floor of MCH's super specialty block. Its audiology rooms have all high-end provisions along with hearing aid test lab, programming and mapping room, ear mould lab and voice lab. Nearly 15,000 new-born infants and 4,000 children undergo various treatments, especially Universal New-born Hearing Screening (UNHS), annually.
At least 22 patients can avail of the services of the new facility at a time now. Earlier, patients had to wait for days to get an appointment, Dr Muraleedharan pointed out. To conduct the auditory verbal therapy and speech therapy, 12 rooms have been specially designed. Some of the other facilities include speech evaluation therapy, auditory verbal rehabilitation and certification for hearing disabilities, voice test and hearing aids. Free hearing aid will also be distributed for children under 18 years of age.
