Fiji Update
We have kept ourselves very busy at the project in Fiji. I have just completed my 4th visit this year.
This trip was an opportunity to conduct more parent and teacher training and making classroom visits for all the children who we have fitted with hearing aids in the Hilton Special School in Suva. We are hopeful that these kids will now be wearing their hearing aids not only at school but at home as well.
The highlight of the this visit was that during this visit we diagnosed two infants with permanent hearing loss through our neonatal screening programs. One is 4 months old and the other is 7 months old. We hope to fit these infants with hearing aids as soon as possible in order to improve their long-term outcomes and so they do not fall too far behind in their language development. The challenges to this are:
Getting them fitted and adjusted well. This is made more difficult as we will need to make exceedingly small earmoulds!! We will also need to get these families back for several appointments and assist them through the journey of having a child with hearing loss.
The lack of rehabilitation services for infants in Fiji. We are still developing these in Frank Hilton Organisation to try to assist these families as we diagnose and fit these children.
The challenge in Fiji is that we are needing to continually upskill all of the staff and support services in order to provide gold standard care to these families.
