National Infant Screening for Hearing Program in India: Necessity, Significance and Justification

Hearing impairment is one of the most prevalent disorder in children and adults worldwide, which not only interferes with the acquisition, development and maintenance of speech and language skills but also adversely deprive the auditory nervous system for future learning. It can have long term harmful effect on educational, social, emotional and cognitive skills in young children; restrict the vocational options and employment opportunities in adults; and can cause isolation, loneliness and depression in older adults, if remain undetected and intervened at the earliest. However, early identification and intervention is known to greatly reverse the ill effects and improve the quality of life of children and adults with hearing impairment. Current clinical means and methods to identify and intervene hearing loss are convenient, cost effective, reasonably accurate beneficial and evidenced based, can be easily employed nation-wide for early identification and intervention of hearing loss. This paper attempts to convince medical colleagues, public health care experts and policy makers by justifying the hearing, as public health issue and relevance of medical screening criteria for hearing. It also discusses the preferred model of hearing screening and intervention strategies in India.