Students from the College of Medicine and Medical Sciences (CMMS) at the Arabian Gulf University (AGU) launched a campaign aimed at spreading awareness of hearing loss diseases, and changing misconceptions related to hearing loss and wrong behaviours towards those with impaired hearing. Around 60 students of both genders participated in the activation of the campaign at the university headquarters, while more than 200 participants benefited from it.
Mr Rashid Al Mutairi, head of the organising committee and student at the CMMS, said that the campaign included various stations, all of which raised awareness on hearing diseases, explaining the importance of sign language, highlighting the key clinical hearing tests, in addition to explaining methods of prevention and treatment for some hearing loss diseases, and providing an overview of the World Health Organisation (WHO) programme for hearing self-examination, and the campaign concluded by offering competitions and distributing prizes and gifts.
Mr Al Mutairi explained that the student campaign worked to spread awareness about hearing, its care, and solving its problems, as the student volunteers highlighted the importance of ear care, and encouraged the university’s internal community to cooperate and understand the nature of people who suffer from hearing loss and ear diseases, explaining that ear and hearing problems are considered one of the most important relevant problems in the Gulf society.
The students participating in the campaign provided an explanation on the proper and healthy method of ear care, clarifying how to use the “hearWHO” programme and providing the opportunity to try the hearing self-examination that the programme provides, while emphasising the importance of teaching and learning sign language for all those affiliated with the health system and the public, with a simple explanation of the basics of sign language and clinical hearing tests, and the opportunity to apply them.
He pointed out that all of these detailed explanations aimed to raise awareness in local communities, in order to address misconceptions about ear and hearing problems and ensure the availability of ear and hearing care services.
Mr Al Mutairi underlined that the campaign was a call to correct misconceptions in society and correct entrenched stigmatising attitudes that limit efforts to prevent and treat hearing loss, adding that changing attitudes about ear and hearing care is essential to improve access to care and reduce the cost of untreated hearing loss.
