Updated:
Just to clarify, I do not support the intervention of the central government in the treatment of deaf people, except at the level of raising awareness and smoothing the path of private enterprise. The reason is that once the government starts creating programs, the programs inevitably turn into schemes and boondoggles for preferred contractors. Kickbacks enter the picture and costs rise. Private efforts are diverted elsewhere, because of the appearance that “something is being done.”
Activists, instead of focusing on reducing the problem, become comfortable with it, because it becomes a source of income and prestige. Bureaucratic creep and empire-building take over.
From Project Deaf India:
As reported by WHO, there are about 250-300 million deaf people in this world, 2/3 of them live in the underdeveloped nations, of these India has the largest share.
From a recent report in the India’s leading daily newspaper, The Times of India, Jan 23, 2007;
“That one out of twelve (1/12) persons in India has hearing loss. The problem is receiving political attention. The health ministry has launched its project to focus on The Prevention and Early diagnosis of deafness and not the least, treatment of ear infections and other diseases causing hearing loss ………”
And more below about one doctor’s fight against India’s epidemic of hearing loss:
On a 1998 visit to India, from which Rotarian Desai emigrated nearly a half century ago, he read a newspaper article about the discovery of the so-called “deaf village.” He learned that India has one of the highest rates of deafness in the world. Most of the deaf are illiterate and uneducated. Discrimination is rampant.
He began to wonder if he could give India’s deaf children the same opportunities for education and employment that his daughter had received. “Why can’t I bring more Anjalis into the world?” he asked himself.
Almost immediately upon returning home, he launched Project Deaf India. The first phase, a $40,000 project funded partly by a Matching Grant, provided a mobile detection unit and audiometer for early diagnosis of deafness, hearing aids for deaf children, training for local teachers in the Total Communication System of deaf education, and an electronic microscope that enables a rural hospital to conduct corrective surgery on deaf patients.
The project quickly drew interest. O.P. Vaish, RI director; and T. Ramesh U. Pai, past RI director, have been instrumental in supporting Project Deaf India, and six other California clubs have joined as sponsors.
In 1999, a Grant for Rotary Volunteers paid for two teachers from Gallaudet University to provide instruction in sign language to children and their families in Mysore for three months. Few deaf people in India know sign language, both because of a lack of funds and because of logistical problems-India has 38 different languages. Dr. Desai is promoting the use of English as a universal sign language in India. To that end, he also arranged for a third Rotary Volunteers grant from January to March 2001. The grant paid for the head of a prominent school for the deaf in New Mexico, USA, to explore the possibility of teaching American Sign Language and computer skills in India.
Last August, the group received a Matching Grant to assist the “deaf village.” The $20,000 project, funded in partnership with Dr. Desai’s club and the Rotary Club of Hubli Mid-Town, supplied three subterranean wells and a water distribution system. The Rotarians also helped set up monthly health clinics, and supply multivitamins and hearing aids. In addition, they have reduced the incidence of ear infections in the village by curbing a tribal practice of inserting tainted coconut oil in the infants’ ears to prevent “leaking ear,” which generally precedes deafness in the village.
The NIH is still investigating the exact cause of the extraordinarily high rate of deafness in the village. It is likely that malnutrition, heredity, cultural habits and a contaminated water supply all play a role. The local people, however, call it “God’s curse.”
“It is believed there are many more deaf villages hidden in the forests of India,” Dr. Desai says. And just as these villages are overlooked by the rest of society, so, too, are most of the deaf in India.
The unemployment rate is about 50 percent for the hearing impaired. “Deafness is still considered a stigma in India,” he says. “Deaf children are discarded and sent to poorly supported government schools. The schools are old, and the children are taught alongside the mentally handicapped. A large number of deaf adults are beggars, and most of the rest are doing some sort of menial job.”\