Suspension of funds: Deaf children, parents to protest outside PM House

Islamabad: Parents of around 400 poor minor children highly vulnerable to lifelong hearing loss have announced that they will protest outside Parliament House and Prime Minister’s House next week along with their children against the suspension of government funding to the country’s only public sector cochlear implant centre functioning in the federal capital.

They told ‘The News’ on Sunday that the last grant for cochlear implant cases was released by June 30, 2018, and the centre got no funds thereafter despite repeated requests by them and medical board to the Prime Minister’s Office, which insisted that the government could no more fund the treatment of such children under the age of five years due to the financial crunch.

“No case has been approved by the government in the current fiscal,” claimed Attaullah Khan, father of a hearing impaired children.

According to him, the centre put up at the ENT Department of the Capital Hospital in G-6/2 in March 2016 with the collaboration of the National Special Education Centre for Hearing Impaired Children has so far performed 150 surgeries to implant hearing devices in minor children whom conventional deaf-aids didn’t benefit.

Of those profoundly deaf children, 141 poor ones from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, southern Punjab, interior Sindh, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir, got the high-priced cochlear implants at the government’s expense under the Prime Minister’s Fatal Disease Programme, while the rest paid for the procedure and hearing devices out of their own pocket.

However, the government funding for the treatment of poor children at the centre came to a halt after the PML-N completed its term in power in May last year.

“We, the parents of around 400 minors awaiting cochlear implants, and a medical board overseeing such cases contacted the Prime Minister’s Office and the parliamentary affairs ministry’s Grievances Wing many times for funds, but to no avail, as the latter insisted that the government is too strapped for cash to offer any help,” Attaullah Khan claimed.

Ijazul Haq, father of another profoundly deaf child, feared that his child and other such children all aged below five years would be unable to hear all through their life if they didn’t get cochlear implants without delay.

He said a special medical board headed by the Capital Hospital executive director and consisting of an ENT surgeon, an audiologist, a biomedical expert and a speech therapist, recommended the cases of poor patients to the Prime Minister’s Office for the funds’ approval.

“Once the funds are released, the Capital Hospital performs the surgery to implant hearing aid, while the services of an audiologist and speech therapist for patients are provided by the Special Education Centre,” he said.

The father warned that most of the children awaiting the release of government funding to get cochlear implants were around five and therefore, they’re at risk of getting lifelong hearing loss.

The parents warned that the government’s failure to attend to their children’s misery had forced them to protest outside Parliament House and Prime Minister’s House next week. They said they would stay put until the government announced the resumption of funding for the cochlear implant centre.