Basseterre, St. Kitts, June 07, 2017 (SKNIS): The Starkey Foundation in collaboration with Ministry of Health and the Rotary Club of St. Kitts is hosting its second year of community-based hearing health care sessions in St. Kitts and Nevis from June 07 – 09, 2017.
“We use hearing as a vehicle to bring love and joy to everybody around the world,” stated Lisa Randall, audiologist with the Starkey Foundation as she expressed how pleased the foundation is to be in St. Kitts a second time to help residents in need of hearing aids and ear care. She also went on to state that the project is set up in a 5 step process which is; registration, ear screening, otoscopy, hearing screening, ear impressions and final quality control.
Lisa Randall explained that the programme is fairly new to the Caribbean and that this is its second time in St. Kitts and that the programme is designed as a two-tier programme where they first come into the country and train local volunteers and then conduct the hearing sessions to help those that are hearing impaired. She also expressed her appreciation for the collaboration between the Ministry of Health and the Rotary club for allowing her organization to help persons to get a better quality of life. “The ability for the patients to get an education, get jobs or to just have a better quality of life, brings the joy of life to them when they are able to get the gift of hearing,” stated Lisa.
“We are trying to create a sustainable programme through the collaboration with the Ministry of Health and the Rotary Club where they will follow up with patients every month to check their hearing aids,” said Kirk Richards, International Development Director at Starkey, as he outlined the different phases of the project. He identified that the program is not only providing persons with hearing aids but creating a sustainable process where patients can continue to get on-going support and maintenance of their hearing devices.
“This project is one of the Rotary Club of St. Kitts major projects that has been really taking off and growing over the years and now that Starkey is involved, it keeps everything in check..,” said Rotarian Ron Boddie as he explained that the Rotary club reached out to the Ministry of Health to support the mission and was able to join with them and the Starkey Hearing Foundation to launch the programme and help it to remain sustainable.
The Starkey Hearing Foundation was created by William F. Austin in 1984 whose life work was built on the premise of “So the World May Hear.” The foundation’s community-based hearing healthcare model makes hearing healthcare and education more accessible to those in need by being simple, sustainable and scalable. The Starkey Hearing Foundation currently has a campaign running where it is are setting the goal to provide one million free hearing aids to those in need by 2020.
The group is slated to go to Nevis on June 08, 2017, and it is expected to serve at least 150 persons in the federation.
