Vintage Hearing Foundation (VHF) has donated 20 aids to the hearing impaired, even as it called for a national policy on hearing.
Presenting the aids in Abuja at the weekend, the founder of VHF Mrs Omotunde Balogun said a lot of Nigerians suffer from profound hearing loss.
She said profound and severe hearing loss is quite common instead of the mild hearing loss that is obtained in other countries.
VHF founder said the causes of hearing loss are traceable to the problems that women face during childbirth.
Lamenting that paucity of funds is a major impediment toward the procurement of hearing aids which she said are quite expensive, Mrs Balogun said the Rotary Hearing Action Group supports the donations to help the foundation meet its targets.
She said the foundation gives out hearing aids to patients from across Nigeria, adding that the reason for giving out only 20 hearing aids was because most of the patients have a profound or severe hearing impairment.
She, however, noted that the foundation was expecting 40 more hearing aids from the Rotary Hearing Action.
She said most Nigerians don’t even know they have a hearing disability.
She appealed for funds to be able to carry out tests and give out hearing aids batteries to recipients.
She said one hearing aid for profound hearing impairment goes for about N1.5 million.
“We are getting them free but we need money to distribute them. That’s to do the testing and provide batteries,” she said.