Hearing Awareness Week will run from 1-7 March and coincides with World Hearing Day on 3 March. This year’s theme, ‘From communities to classrooms: hearing care for all children’ will focus on addressing childhood hearing loss.
Find out more about World Hearing Day here
Around 90 million children aged 5 –19 years live with hearing loss. The majority of these children experience conductive hearing loss as a result of otitis media (often referred to as 'glue ear') or other factors such as impacted ear wax, Eustachian tube dysfunction and other outer and middle ear structural issues.
Nationally, around 1 in 3 primary school-aged children experience conductive hearing loss at some point, while congenital hearing loss (present at birth) affects approximately 1 to 2 in every 1,000 babies born in Australia.
Every year, 300 to 600 infants are diagnosed with permanent (sensorineural) deafness annually. Universal newborn hearing screening programs across all states help identify these cases early to mitigate developmental impacts.
Read more about hearing loss here
