World Hearing Day
Audio of blog
Supporting staff and students to achieve their full potential since 1968.
Welcome to our weekly CENMAC blog post
World Hearing Day – Theme: “To hear for life, listen with care!” | by Abeer Essa, Advisory Speech and Language Therapist
3 March 2022 marked World Hearing Day. This is a campaign held each year by the Office of Prevention of Blindness and Deafness of the World Health Organisation (WHO) to raise awareness of hearing care and hearing loss. WHO hosts the event and encourages stakeholders in the field across the globe to participate and organise their own campaigns.
The key message of this year’s campaign is to focus on the importance of preventing hearing loss through safe listening to maintain good hearing across life.
The first World Hearing Day was celebrated in 2007. Before 2016, it was called ‘International Ear Care Day.” Since then, WHO prepares educational materials, posters and banners to provide to the public in a variety of languages. It also reports and plans events across the world. Every year WHO chooses a theme; last year’s theme was “Hearing Care for All”, which emphasised the importance of good hearing and communication at all stages of life. Its main message for policy makers was to take timely action in preventing and addressing hearing loss across the life course, invest in cost effective interventions, and for governments to act to integrate person-centred hearing and ear care within national health care plans.
Celebrating last year’s World Hearing Day, the very first World Report on Hearing was released. WHO hoped it would reach out to global organisations and national governments to raise awareness and organise action across the world to alleviate hearing loss and ear illness.
This year, WHO’s World Hearing theme is: “To hear for life, listen with care.” The key message of this year’s campaign is to focus on the importance of preventing hearing loss through safe listening to maintain good hearing across life. These are the key messages of the campaign published by WHO:
- Ear and hearing care can maintain good hearing across individuals’ lifetimes.
- Preventions of hearing loss, including the loss that’s caused by exposure to noises.
- Exposure to recreational sound exposure can be decreased by utilising ‘safe listening’ measures.
- For governments to raise awareness about ‘safe listening’ by implementing evidence-based standards.
The following was launched on 3 March:
- Global standard for safe listening entertainment venues
- mSafeListening handbook
- Media toolkit
WHO launched the following hashtags:
#safelistening #worldhearingday #hearingcare
Don’t forget you can share your CENMAC experiences for our CENMAC family to enjoy. Plus, sign up for our newsletter to read more about Education and Technology.
