(0954) Pediatric Cochlear Implantation in North-West Nigeria: The Story of a New Beginning

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: Globally more than 1.5 billion people experience some form of hearing loss, and 430 million among them require rehabilitation. Across the age spectrum in LMIC, hearing loss effect is most severe in under 5s. Prevalence of hearing loss in Nigeria following a survey in 2002 was 17.9%, and more than 6% require rehabilitation. Severe to profound hearing loss in children impacts language acquisition, educational achievement, effective communication including cognitive development, and emotional and psychological impact, not only to the child but also to the parents. Pediatric cochlear implantation is often considered one of the most effective interventions for severe to profound hearing loss. It has brought substantial benefit to those implanted and when accompanied by proper rehabilitation, they lead to significant improvement in audiological status and speech perception skills. Commencing pediatric cochlear implant surgeries require a scientific process, availability of trained personnel, equipment, parental understanding, community participation, and stakeholders acceptance and participation in a developing country like ours as these is required to achieve good results. In Nigeria, there is an increase need and desire to provide this service for children with profound hearing loss even in the face of difficult challenges and lack of understanding of the process is an hinderance to the success, sustainability and achievements of the goals.
This paper is aim at telling our story and provide information, describing the process, challenges, barriers, successes, and role of stakeholders and policy makers and most importantly local and international collaboration in the commencement of pediatric cochlear implantation in Katsina, Nigeria.

This will describe the process of initiation of pediatric cochlear implantation in a resource limited environment. The lead ENT surgeon was able to initiate the commencement of surgery through international collaboration and collaborating with community, parents, and policy makers. We assembled our CI team involving training of surgeon, an auditory verbal therapist, and cochlear implant audiology technician and speech therapist while the first implanted kids had part of their rehabilitation in same training institution during same period. We describe the outcome of the first two pediatric cochlear-implanted kids in northwest Nigeria, our major challenges, and successes including the plans and recommendation.