Early hearing screening in South Africa – time to get real about context

Abstract

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Maternal knowledge and views regarding early hearing detection and intervention in children aged 0–5 years at a semi-urban primary care clinic in South Africa

“…It is crucial to educate mothers on various risk factors and management of hearing loss so as to reduce its consequences (Dudda et al,2017). In South Africa, implementing risk-based hearing screening programmes, which involves screening of newborns with known risk factors for hearing loss, is a more reasonable interim approach to follow in order to ensure early identification of children with hearing loss on the various levels of service delivery contexts within the South African healthcare system (Kanji, 2016).…”

Healthcare practitioners’ views about early hearing detection and intervention practices in KwaZulu‑Natal, South Africa

“…[32] Worldwide, there is no consensus on the relative importance of the risk factors that have been used to screen infants for hearing loss and it is therefore important that these are regularly refined for specific contexts. The implementation of risk-based screening is a feasible interim approach, [33] with context-specific risk factors needing to be established and profiled for SA, and their performance determined, to ensure appropriate identification of hearing loss in infants. [33] Most participants agreed that nurses should routinely perform hearing screening during immunisation visits, although just over 50% of the participants disagreed that nurses were knowledgeable about risk factors for hearing loss.…”

“…The implementation of risk-based screening is a feasible interim approach, [33] with context-specific risk factors needing to be established and profiled for SA, and their performance determined, to ensure appropriate identification of hearing loss in infants. [33] Most participants agreed that nurses should routinely perform hearing screening during immunisation visits, although just over 50% of the participants disagreed that nurses were knowledgeable about risk factors for hearing loss. It is important that primary-care nurses working in rural contexts -where there is generally limited access to audiology services -are aware of risk factors to facilitate timely identification of hearing loss and appropriate referral.…”

Early hearing detection and intervention: Reflections from the South African context

“…Considering the realities of the South African health care context, and given that EHDI is vital for newborns and infants with hearing loss, we need to seriously consider how NHS services may be adapted to better meet these realities. One option is to seriously consider targeted NHS as a starting point or interim approach to early identification, particularly within a hospital setting (Kanji, 2016 ). The reason being that certain medical case history factors may predispose or place newborns at a greater risk for significant hearing loss.…”