Visit to Lake Como meeting in Italy May 26-30, 2004

Raj Desai and his daughter, Anjali (See Photo) who is profoundly deaf were invited guests at the Newborn Hearing Screening (NHS 2004) in Lake Como Italy. They participated actively during plenary session as well as put up a poster on "Project Deaf India (See Photo).  The poster's theme was supported by the Rotary Club of Newport Balboa, Rotary Club of Mysore, and The All India Institute of Speech and Hearing , Mysore(AIISH). The poster summarized the personal history of Anjali who was determined hearing impaired before 6 months of age, as a result of the Rubella syndrome.  She was then given Intervention with family, social and psychological support. Anjali was also introduced to sign language and schooling.

In Mysore, a pioneer project of the early detection of the hearing impaired of every new born and intervention, has been started (EHDI) and the preliminary data was presented. In Mysore, infants are born at public and private hospitals, there are also a sizable amount of births by midwives at home.  From a Matching grant of Rotary International, a mobile van equipped with a sound proof room will go to remote villages and test newborns before one month of age.  The infants found with hearing disabilities will be referred to a central facility for intervention; i.e. surgery, hearing aids or cochlear implants.  All given free to the needy and by a sliding scale to those who can pay.

In February, 2004, both Raj Desai and Anjali were invited to a National EHDI conference in Washington D.C. where Anjali was the only speaker who was deaf.  She was provided with sign language interpreters at both meetings. The success of her speech in Washington resulted in the invitation to the NHS 2004, International meeting at Lake Como, Italy.

At the NHS 2004 conference in Italy, Dr Desai took active part in the International forum on Newborn Detection and made an important contribution. As the EHDI is only practiced in the developing countries, whereas 2/3 of the deaf children are born in the UNDERDEVELOPED nations, Dr Desai remarked that the developed countries should share their experience with funding for instruments for Newborn Diagnosis and also send expert Pediatric Audiologists to train their counterparts in the poor nations. This idea drew immediate attention of the people who represented international groups, such as WHO.

The second point made by Raj Desai also deserved attention.  Because of his extensive experience as a Cancer Doctor he started many "Cancer support groups", that meet weekly in most of hospitals, and help newly diagnosed cancer patient and family.  He suggested that similar groups should be started weekly, at every EHDI - newborn screening University or hospital. Recognizing that any disability at birth is a burden to the child and family, a supportive group, consisting of an ENT doctor, Audiologist, Social worker, a psychologist and parents of a successful deaf child, volunteer to help a newly diagnosed deaf child and the parents to face the disability.  The immediate response was well appreciated at the conference

Dr Desai distributed about 80-90 CDROMs of his documentary "Silent Village" to members of various countries.  Thus we hope that the "Project Deaf India" has now created awareness in many countries of the world with fervent hope that the incidences of deafness will be decreased globally by Rubella vaccination, and the early detection of deafness will enable a hearing impaired child with early intervention and make him/her a useful self earning citizen of the world.