Claudia Ciobanu
BRASOV, Sep 24 2007 (IPS) – Three million of Romania s 21 million people suffer from different types of hearing impairment. But only about 10 percent of them get proper help.
The main reason for this is the prejudice towards people with disabilities. The fear they would be laughed at or excluded from jobs means they avoid declaring they have a hearing condition. More importantly, it can prevent them from looking for the right treatment for themselves or their children.
The Centre for the Integration of Deaf and Hearing Impaired Children, the only such in Romania, is located in Brasov, a Transylvanian city 160 km north of capital Bucharest. When the centre was opened in 1993, Mihai Scafaru, who has been managing the institution since, wrote personal letters of invitation to 48 families of children under eight years of age who had hearing problems but had not been sent to special schools yet.
Some of the parents were public figures in Brasov, and they were afraid it would damage their image if their children were going to special schools, Scafaru told IPS. Only 24 of the families were persuaded by the letter.
But the new centre has made it easier for reluctant parents to accept enrolling their children. It was the first institution in the country to sign up both children with hearing impairments and children without such problems and to run common educational programmes. Before then, children with hearing impairments could either go to special schools or stay at home.
The director of the centre insists that integration with the community is the best way to help children with hearing conditions. On the one hand, studying and playing side by side with their peers helps children with special needs feel more confident with social interactions, thus reducing the chances they will develop an inferiority complex.
On the other hand, the other children too learn to become more accepting. And Scafaru says, the state spends less by running just one institution instead of two separate ones.
The centre in Brasov runs as a kindergarten. We have more than ten groups of children, out of which two are for the hearing impaired, explains Maricica Ganea, a teacher working the night shifts at the centre. Some of them just come for the day programme, but many spend the nights too. I was very touched when I started working for the first time with the little ones who couldn t hear well, but there is no significant difference between them and the other kids, and I wish people understood that.
The centre was opened in Brasov because the education authorities in the county specifically asked for help to open such an institution. Since then, no representatives from other counties in Romania have expressed an interest to open similar kindergartens.
Keeping children with problems at home or sending them to special schools rarely provides them with the precise care they need. We run the risk of transforming infants with minor hearing impairments into deaf and dumb young people because in the special schools we employ methods fit for such severe cases, explains Scafaru. Plus, children with small problems should be surrounded by peers who can speak well, so they can learn how the sounds are formed properly.
At the centre in Brasov, families receive help to select proper hearing aids. Numerous Romanians end up with an unsuitable device because they do not know how to choose the right one or, more often, because they cannot afford a good one.
The price of a hearing aid runs from 250 to 3,000 euro. The government offers about 250 euro per device to patients once every five years (or twice for children). This amount covers only the cheapest aid, which is rarely the proper one.
In some cases, by giving them this aid, we just make people hear less, because we simply block the ears instead of helping them amplify those particular sounds they cannot hear properly, Mihai Scafaru says.
Medical authorities in the country are also not doing enough to provide adequate information for prevention of such conditions. While many hearing problems are genetically transmitted, some can be prevented. Warnings against the risk of exposing infants to strong noises, and vaccination campaigns against conditions that can cause deafness in newborns are the responsibility of the government.
Because of neglected hearing problems, kids may end up not being able to follow a class, gradually missing more and more information, and finally never being able to catch up with their colleagues, says Maricica Ganea, a teacher with 35 years of experience. I cannot stress enough how important it is that parents and educators pay attention to a child s hearing from very early on.