By Hadiza Mohammed

The King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center’s (KSrelief) volunteer medical team has performed 28 cochlear implant surgeries for children in the Republic of Kenya.

In a statement made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday, KSrelief said the operations were successfully carried out on Saturday.

It added that speech and language rehabilitation services were also provided to the children.

In addition, 28 educational sessions for the children’s families were organised, benefiting 50 individuals.

A cochlear implant is a small, complex electronic device that can help to provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard-of-hearing.

The implant consists of an external portion that sits behind the ear and a second portion that is surgically placed under the skin.

An implant does not restore normal hearing. Instead, it can give a deaf person a useful representation of sounds in the environment and help him or her to understand speech.

The assistance was part of the Saudi Sama’a Volunteer Programme for cochlear implantation and auditory rehabilitation for Kenyan and Somali children in Kenya.

It include the participation of 20 volunteers from various medical specialties.

NAN reports that statistics have shown that in Kenya, 14 in every 1,000 children have moderate or severe hearing loss.

Only a very small percentage of them have access to education in sign language.

The lack of access to education hinders not only their academic progress, but also their overall social and economic development.(SPA/NAN) (www.nannews.ng)

Edited by Ismail Abdulaziz