‘Remove tax on imported hearing aids’
The Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) Department of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital has called on the government to remove the tax on hearing aids imported into the country.
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The Head of the ENT Department, Dr Emmanuel Kitcher who made the call, said the tax on the imported hearing aids made them expensive, making it difficult for patients to access.
Removing the taxes, Dr Emmanuel Kitcher said, would facilitate access to hearing aids in the country.
Dr Kitcher made the call when he presented a paper on the topic: “National burden of deafness; what can we collectively do”, at a symposium organised by the ENT Department of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra, to celebrate Audiology Week.
The symposium forms part of activities planned to mark the 90th anniversary of the establishment of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, which is being celebrated on the theme: “90 years of excellence in health care, our future aspirations and challenges”.
Dr Kitcher expressed concern about the insufficient hearing protection devices in the country, adding “the few that are available are expensive, therefore making it virtually impossible to be afforded by the ordinary Ghanaian”.
He also expressed worry about the insufficient number of audiologists in the country and called for the issue to be addressed as a matter of urgency .
Currently, there are about 10 audiologists in the country. The figure falls far below the World Health Organisation (WHO) standard for a population of about 25 million people.
"The few that are available have reached their retiring age, which is worrying because we are not training enough audiologists in the country”, he said.
As result, Dr Kitcher called on corporate institutions and government to partner the ENT centre to train more audiologists in the country.
He said currently there were just four audio centres in Accra, Kumasi, Winneba and Cape Coast that catered for the whole country, in addition to only three private audio centres.
Dr Kitcher, therefore, appealed for the expansion of the audiology centres across the country to lessen the burden on the centres.
He also called for the establishment of a national hearing and speech foundation that could help address some of the challenges facing people with hearing problems.
Dr Kitcher also advised mothers to ensure that they sent their new-born babies for hearing assessment since such services were free in the country.
For his part, a Visiting Professor with the School of Allied Health Science of the University of Ghana, Professor John Ribera, called for legislation or a national policy on hearing impairment.
He also asked the media to promote educational drives on ENT and other issues.
The audiologist in charge of the Hearing Assessment Centre at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Ms Jemima Fynn, called on industries to ensure that they performed mandatory hearing assessment for their staff before employing them.
"We have been experiencing situations where those working in the Telcos especially have come with impairment cases due to the nature of their work”, she said, adding "We want the Environmental Protection Agency to monitor and ensure that people who are employed in industries that generate noise are provided with hearing protection aids”.
Although there are no statistics on hearing loss in the country, she said the number of cases recorded by the centre has doubled over the years.
