AWARENESS LEVEL ABOUT NEWBORN HEARING SCREENING AMONG THE GENERAL POPULATION

Hearing loss has become the most prevalent birth defect affecting one in 1000 newborn babies. The JCIH National Institute on deafness has told that newborn hearing screening within the hours of birth is the only way to eradicate it and paves way for early diagnosis intervention. Diagnosing congenital hearing loss at birth becomes a very crucial part of every newborn baby as the hearing loss has a deteriorating effect on the speech and language development as well and the academic performance of the individual. Even children with minimal sensorineural hearing loss and unilateral hearing loss have had challenges in educational performance and faced psychosocial difficulties. (Bess et al, 1998). Also, it was proved that when children were identified and intervened as early as 6 months of age, they had better developed language skills. (Mehl et al, 1998).