World Hearing Day is an annual global campaign to raise awareness about ear and hearing health care. This year's theme is "Ear and hearing care for all! Let's make it a reality". It focuses on the importance of hearing care being accessible to everyone. Therefore, the Audiology Programme of School of Health Sciences and the Audiology Clinic of Hospital USM, decided to collaborate with San Pedro College of Philipines, Rhazes Telehealth Malaysia, and Excel Genius Special School Malaysia in order to create universal hearing health awareness.

Theme 1: Hearing and Medication, 3 March 2023

Theme 2: Hearing and Education, 15 March 2023

Hearing is another way to connect to the world. However, we can lose our hearing ability due to the ageing process, listening to loud music, head trauma, taking certain medications, and so on. Our first theme this year is "Webinar Malaysia & Philippines on Ear and Hearing Healthcare: Audiology, Physical Therapy, & Pharmacy Perspective," which focuses on protecting our hearing from medication side effects. We appreciate the distinguished speakers who spoke about hearing and its relationship to medications. Our speaker also discussed how to identify hearing loss, including the different types of hearing assessments and how to manage those who have hearing loss.

In addition, our speaker also briefly discussed the role of community pharmacists in treating minor ear ailments. We had nearly 350 participants by the end of the webinar, and there were 1.3K viewers in total. This webinar is still available at the following link: https://fb.watch/kqCf1pPy-H/.

There are 34 million children with hearing loss, and only 17% of those who need hearing aids use them. Integrating ear and hearing care into countries' primary healthcare systems can help close this gap. As a result, WHO published a primary care and hearing training manual this year. The manual is a step-by-step guide to preventing, identifying, and treating hearing loss and common ear diseases that cause hearing loss. The Ministry of Education Malaysia registered 706 children with hearing impairments as having special education needs in 2017, increasing to 4072 in 2019. This increase demonstrated that parents are more aware of the importance of hearing healthcare and work hard to ensure that their children have access to it. Previously, education for children with hearing impairments focused on sign language and cued speech. Families resisted enrolling their special needs children in formal schools, implying that our system was incapable of meeting their educational and developmental needs.

The Audiology Programme hopes to promote better hearing healthcare through the hearing awareness campaign, especially for school-aged children. Up to 23 percent of students are found to have an ear health or hearing issue. Thus, that brings us to the second session, on 15 March 2023, with the theme “Hearing and Education: Engaging Deaf & Hard of Hearing (DHH) Primary Schoolers in Effective Learning”. This session was conducted at Excel Genius Special School, Kajang. On that day, a seminar on effective learning for school-aged children with hearing impairment was shared by Dr. Mohd Fadzil Nor Rashid. In addition, a free hearing screening had been conducted on special children, and discovered that half of them needed to be referred to the general hospital for further management. The screening team comprises four experienced audiologists: Dr. Wan Najibah Wan Mohamad (School of Health Sciences), Ms. Suzana Mansor (Hospital USM), and Mdm. Halimah Mahmud (Hospital USM), and Mr. Norizwan Mohamed Khalid (Best Hearing Aid Centre Sdn. Bhd.).

"I believe that these two sessions World Hearing Day 2023 enabled all participants to understand better hearing health care, particularly related to medication and education for school-aged children with hearing impairment," said event director Dr. Wan Najibah Wan Mohamad. We would like to express our gratitude and congratulations to the Audiology Programme School of Health Sciences, Audiology Clinic Hospital USM, Rhazes Telehealth, School of Allied Health Sciences, San Pedro College of Philippines, and Excel Genius Special School Malaysia, as well as all industry partners.