Milestone reached with opening of sound treated room

Wed, Feb 10, 2016

A major milestone after months of struggling to perform hearing assessments in the most challenging of noisy clinic environments.

On a recent trip to Kampala, Uganda, our UK medical team paid their first visit to the new ear clinic at Kisenyi Health Centre. This health centre offers a wide range of health services resulting in it  attracting a large client base from all over Kampala. It is also well situated in central Kampala making it easily accessible.

The ear clinic opened at the end of May last year and the numbers of children attending has been steadily increasing. The clinic was formed by partitioning off one end of a corridor at the back of the maternity unit to give us a good sized clinic room.  The available space was considered large enough to allow us to plan for the construction of a small sound treated room to be built in one corner of the clinic room. In less than two weeks the room was constructed and sound treated using locally sourced materials.

The room gives us an ambient sound level of between 35-40dB which is fit for purpose given the challenging noisy environments we previously worked in. For months we had been struggling to carry out hearing assessments in noisy clinic rooms and on many occasions we had to abandon testing and bring the child back another day to try and repeat the test again. This proved costly and inconvenienced all parties concerned. Following completion of the room we were able to clear the waiting list of children who had been waiting for hearing assessments.

Our Ugandan team are delighted with this new facility at Kisenyi Health Centre which will benefit them and many children who attend for hearing assessment. The ear clinic at Kisenyi Health Centre is to become our flagship assessment centre for all babies and children requiring hearing screening and audiological assessment.