Raising awareness for hearing impairments

TEN to 12 infants are being born on the island every year with a form of hearing impairment, with around one out of 1,000 people affected.

The statistics were provided by the School for the Deaf in Nicosia, just before the start of Deaf Week tomorrow, which hopes to raise awareness of the phenomenon.

The week’s motto is: ‘The Deaf Can Do Anything You Can Do Except Talk’.

It will officially be opened by House Speaker Demetris Christofias at 4pm at the Hilton Park Hotel in Nicosia and will include a series of events running up to November 9.

Lellos Demetriades is President of the Deaf Children Welfare Fund and he told the Mail that the hearing impaired, “are fully able to contribute to society in every way and can live a full life, just like everybody else. They need our love and support.”

Demetriades, a former long-serving Mayor of Nicosia, also stated that the Welfare Fund, established in 1972, has raised nearly £300,000 over the last ten years, which has been used on equipment and building infrastructure.

He also praised a government decision last year to recognise sign language as an official form of communication. “This was long overdue,” he said.

The School for the Deaf was established in 1953. In the beginning, the School was residential and bi-communal.

By the end of 1976, it transferred to Makedonitissa, to a property offered by the Kykkos Monastery.

In 1990, with the beginning of mainstreaming of hearing impaired children, numbers increased dramatically and the School has been functioning as a day school ever since. There are around ten new children enrolled every year.

Programmes and services are wide and include: information on hearing impairment, educational options, psychological support, vocational training programmes, social integration, job placement and an audiology centre.

“There is still prejudice in society against the hearing impaired, but thanks to education, things are gradually improving,” Demetriades said.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.