‘Our goal is to help people hear’: 1,800 people in Armenia received hearing aids

In many countries, the entire attention of the health system is focused on potentially fatal diseases, and the problem of hearing loss does not receive proper attention, says Trevor Turner, manager of international programs at Starkey Hearing Foundation. Of course, hearing loss cannot kill a person, but it can negatively affect the quality of his life and prevent him from communicating with other people and working.

According to Trevor Turner, there are about 260 million people in the world who suffer from hearing loss, and 80% of them do not have access to hearing aids. Many people in Armenia also have hearing problems, and most of them cannot afford buying hearing aids. To help them, a group of specialists from the United States came to Armenia as part of a charity mission initiated by the Starkey Hearing Foundation to provide free hearing aids to 1,800 people.

Trevor Turner who has severe congenital hearing loss also uses hearing aids on both ears. In a conversation with NEWS.am Medicine he said that he was born in a country where he had access to the best doctors and hearing aids. But many people in the world do not have such access, and the goal of the charitable mission is to help such people.

William Austin, the founder of the Starkey Hearing Foundation, told Armenian reporters that in his opinion, all people on the planet are one family, and therefore all people should respect and help each other.

‘We are doing this work and we hope that this becomes ‘infectious’ and we can affect a conciseness shift towards more tolerance, more caring in our world,’ he said.

He added that his company Starkey Hearing Technologies manufactures hearing aids that are sold to people from wealthy countries, and part of the incomes are used to fund charitable missions under the slogan ‘So the world may hear.’

Armenia is the 106^th country where the charity mission of Starkey Hearing Foundation was held. In 54 countries the mission is conducted regularly, and it is possible that Armenia will become the 55th country where the mission will come every year. Every year, about 200,000 hearing aids are distributed within the framework of the charitable missions, and this figure, according to the foundation’s representatives, is growing year by year.

One of the volunteers of the mission, hearing expert Fortunato Felliano told NEWS.am Medicine that charitable missions give him and his colleagues the opportunity to see and better understand ‘the world beyond their own walls.’ During such missions, they see how many people need help, and they understand then can do a lot to help them.

Fortunato Felliano and his colleagues installed hearing aids for Armenian patients on October 15-17. The patents who received hearing aids also received medals with the inscription ‘1’: these medals symbolize a small victory for each of these patients.

67-year-old Seda Onanian is one of the patients who received hearing aids today, on October 16. She said she had had hearing problems since childhood, but did not pay attention to it. With age, her hearing continued to weaken, and now it is very hard for her to hear without hearing aids. According to Ms. Seda, hearing is very important for a person, regardless of age. And the elderly, if they can hear well with the help of hearing aids, feel less constrained, communicate more and lead a more active life.

The idea to bring the mission of the Starkey Hearing Foundation to Armenia belonged to Haykuhi and Armen Kavukchyans, hearing aids specialists from Los Angeles. In a conversation with NEWS.am Medicine Haykui Kavukchyan said that in the course of this mission, about 1,800 patients will receive hearing aids, in general about 4,000 hearing aids were brought to Armenia, one for each ear of each patient. These devices will be delivered to residents of Yerevan and several northern regions, including cities like Gyumri, Vanadzor, Ijevan and Noyemberyan. Specialists from Arabkir MC and local volunteers helped to organize all this.

In a few days, most of the mission members will go back to their homeland, but the people who received the devices within the mission will not remain without attention. Two specialists will remain in Yerevan until October 27 to train several local specialists so that they can help those who received hearing aids: if the latter have any problems with the devices, if they need to repair the devices or replace the batteries, they will be able to contact these specialists and get free help.

Haykui Kavukchyan added that she hopes that in the near future the mission will be able to go to Nagorno-Karabakh, too.

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