World Hearing Day 2024 | WHO

Message from the WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti

The World Health Organization warns that nearly 2.5 billion people worldwide will develop hearing problems by 2050. 

Today is the 2024 edition of World Hearing Day, a day devoted to raising awareness on how to prevent deafness and hearing loss and promote ear and hearing care across the world. 

This year’s theme is “Changing mindsets: Let’s make ear and hearing care a reality for all!” It presents an opportunity to shine a light on deafness and hearing loss, promote their prevention, and advance the optimization of ear and hearing care. 

The theme is a mandate for all people in all nations to join hands to raise awareness of ear and hearing problems. This is especially important in the WHO African Region, where misperceptions and stigmatization constitute key barriers to care seeking, thus driving the continuing rise in the burden of hearing loss. 

It is estimated that over one and a half billion people currently experience some degree of hearing loss worldwide. Up to 80% of them live in low- and middle-income countries. 

In Africa, an estimated 40 million people have disabling hearing loss. This number continues to grow, not without socio-economic consequences. At an individual level, hearing loss affects communication and speech development in children, cognition, and academic performance subsequently impacting the ability to secure gainful employment, resulting in poverty. Indeed, people with hearing loss and deafness face difficulties with communication and are driven into social isolation and mental-ill-health conditions like depression and dementia. 

Up to 60% of causes of hearing loss are preventable through simple, cost-effective public health interventions. Such preventable but common causes of hearing loss include maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy, chronic ear infections, vaccine preventable diseases such as meningitis and rubella, and occupational and/or recreational noise. And we know that these common causes of hearing loss can be effectively prevented by integrating their diagnoses and treatment into the primary health care system and empowering primary healthcare workers through training. 

An emerging cause of hearing loss is recreational noise. Currently, more than a billion young people globally are at risk of permanent hearing loss due to exposure to loud music from their personal listening devices. Another contributor to the high burden of hearing loss is increasing survival into old age, with more people in the region getting into old age and ending up with age-related hearing loss. 

Access to hearing and ear care remains limited; the limiting factors are known to be lack of awareness among policy makers, shortage of appropriately skilled health workforce, poor infrastructure for ear and hearing care, misperceptions, and high cost of services such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and other implantable devices for rehabilitation of hearing loss. 

Also, countries have yet to give ear care and prevention of hearing ill-health the attention they deserve. A recent analysis of ear and hearing care in the region shows that only 20 out of 47 countries of the WHO African Region have designated a national Ear and Hearing Care Coordinator; and only 11 of 47 countries have functional national Ear and Hearing Care (EHC) programmes. 

In the WHO African Region, there are several ongoing efforts to ensure hearing care is addressed and hearing loss prevented. 

We have successfully concluded a regional analysis on ear and hearing care and the report that will enable us to advocate for ear and hearing care in the region. 

We have also developed two modules aimed at integrating diagnosis and treatment of chronic otitis media and hearing loss in the primary healthcare system through WHO PEN. This will help empower heath care providers at the primary level to provide ear and hearing care services. 

These initiatives will ensure that ear and hearing health care is well accounted for in the health care system. 

Without a doubt, it is time to prioritize ear care and hearing loss in our countries. Everybody has a role to play. Health sector policy makers must drive and lead a robust multi-sectorial response to ear and hearing ill-health, including developing or strengthening national programs for hearing ill-health prevention and care. 

Learn more:

The World Report on Hearing has been developed in response to the World Health Assembly resolution, adopted in 2017 as a means of providing guidance for Member States to integrate ear and hearing care into their national health plans. World report on hearing (who.int)

The World report on hearing recommends that WHO Member States take urgent and evidence-based policy action to prevent, identify and rehabilitate hearing loss. Hearing screening: considerations for implementation (who.int)

Integrated people-centered ear and hearing care: a policy brief

WHO ear and hearing: survey handbook

Primary Ear and Hearing Care training manual

Noncommunicable Diseases, Rehabilitation and Disability (who.int)