As per WHO, there are around 360 million people who suffer from disabling hearing loss all across the world. However, greater prevalence has been found in the Asia Pacific and sub-Saharan Africa regions. As a result, on an international level, there has been seen a cost of 750 billion international dollars every year. Thereby, there is a huge need for hearing impairment awareness at an early stage in developing countries like Pakistan. I felt so contented to know about ZB Foundation, a Non-Profit Hearing Screening setup in Islamabad that are working for this cause.
This organization came into being in the memory of a little girl named Zahra Beau Naqvi. Zahra was an adopted child but didn’t survive after a few months of her birth due to a lack of newborn screening. If she would have a heel pricking test at birth, her genetic disease would have been diagnosed and cured to save her life. The tragedy was heart-wrenching for the parents but it brought some good to the people of Pakistan. Now the goal behind ZB Foundation is to let not any other child lose their life as Zahra lost.
This organization is providing free facilities to babies in Islamabad and Rawalpindi for hearing screening. Knowing the hearing impairment at an early stage allows us to perform interventions. This allows these kids to better cope with the health challenges they will encounter due to hearing loss or impairment. Furthermore, this will allow them to better utilize the educational facilities and become competent enough to step into the business, tech, and other job-related opportunities in the future.
I view it as both a health and social initiative to promote diversity and inclusion as it has laid the foundation by implementing intervention at the root cause level. Furthermore, the hearing screening equipment, donated by Pakistan Ear Foundation, has been installed in the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) to support as many Deaf newborns as possible.
Also, they are ahead in educating parents to identify hearing impairment in their newborns through their social media pages. Even though the organization is facing a lot of challenges for a full-fledged working and creating maximum awareness in parents but they are determined to make New Born Screening test accessible.
I pledge my word of honor from this prestigious platform to the entire team of ZB Foundation. Hope with the help of organizations like ZB Foundation, we would be able to practice diversity and inclusion in every domain.
The author Kashaf Alvi is Pakistan’s first differently-abled Certified Microsoft Associate, Deaf Author, columnist, short film Script-writer and deaf activist. You can reach out to him at [email protected]