Linking multiple parties to protect hearing health

On March 3, children in the experimental kindergarten in Yuping Dong Autonomous County, Tongren City, Guizhou Province were feeling the impact of volume on hearing. Photo by Hu Panxue (Published by Xinhua News Agency)

Beijing Newspaper (Shen Qi) The cuckoo’s call, the rushing sound when it rains, the cicada’s chirping at night… For Jiang Mengnan, who was deaf in both ears due to drugs, it used to exist only in imagination. Jiang Mengnan learned “listening” and “speaking” through lip-reading, and became a doctoral student of Tsinghua University with excellent grades, determined to solve the problems of life and health, and was named “2021 Person Who Moved China”.

There are many more hearing-impaired people like Jiang Mengnan. At the same time, the relatively large number of presbycusis patients brings new challenges to the prevention and rehabilitation of hearing impairment; the problem of the younger generation of noise-induced hearing-impairment is becoming increasingly prominent, and the number of noise-induced hearing-impaired people is increasing year by year.

On the 23rd National Ear Day just past, China Deaf Association, China Hearing and Speech Rehabilitation Science Journal, China Hearing Medicine Development Foundation, China Aging Development Foundation, Centering on the theme of “Caring for Hearing Health, Listening to a Wonderful Future”, China Unicom, Tencent Public Welfare and other organizations jointly launched the “Tian Lai Listening to the Future Action Partnership”, which aims to gather resources from all walks of life and actively provide practical and effective help for the hearing impaired to integrate into the digital society.

This activity focuses on the three levels of “hearing test, auxiliary hearing, and public welfare assistance”. The elderly carry out free offline hearing services, cooperate with China Unicom to launch an upgraded version of the Hearing King Card for hearing-impaired users, and cooperate with a number of foundations to launch a special public welfare fund for hearing-impaired assistance for young talents and the elderly.

“How to guide social attention and understand the importance of hearing health while providing accessible information services to hearing-impaired groups through digital technology is the top priority of future hearing health work.” Executive Director of China Disabled Persons’ Federation Yang Yang, director of the board of directors and chairman of the China Association of the Deaf, said that he is glad that more and more social forces have joined the ranks of caring for the hearing-impaired groups and paying attention to hearing health. Model and practice, and truly realize the wish of hearing-impaired groups to participate in a better life.