The gift of bionic hearing

The children run around playing tag, their laughter and squeals of joy is music to their parent’s ears.

The oldest boy breaks away from the group and pushes a wheelchair forward whizzing it around as he tries to include his friend in the play. The adults sit around enjoying their desultory conversation but keep a watchful eye on their brood.
Yahya, Mohanad, Sara, Ghosun, Yousaf, Abdullah, Noor, Sama and Sajjad are on their way back to their war-torn country after spending five months in Bahrain. They are among the last of the Iraqi children to leave the island this week.
They travelled to Bahrain in October as part of the group, which comprised of 45 children accompanied by their parents to undergo various medical treatments. For eight of these nine children the world was a silent circus where they could enjoy the sights but could not hear the sounds. They could taste life but not savour it to the fullest. Now they go back with hope for a better and brighter future.
“Hear how my son says mama and baba!” says Afaq prompting her thirteen-year-old son Yahya with an encouraging nudge. Yahya mouths the words, barely audible, and then smiles his million-dollar smile. The other children crowd around me, ten-year-old Abdullah greets me with a guttural “asalam-o-aliqum”, Sama clearly sounds three Arabic words and giggles and Mohanad obviously the jester amongst all of his friends pulls a funny face and sends everyone in peals of laughter.
“For the last five months Bahrain has been my home. I left my husband and my two boys back in Baghdad and have travelled here so that Sama can have her hearing problem sorted out by doctors in Bahrain,” says Jehan Ahmed, mother of the nine-year-old Sama who was born partially deaf and her hearing had been deteriorating ever since. “Sama would never have received treatment were it not for Naseer Shamma’s organisation and, of course, the generosity of the King of Bahrain His Majesty Shaikh Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa,” adds Jehan who is a teacher of English in a local Baghdad school and obviously does not have the means to pay for her daughter’s treatment.
Naseer Shamma is a well-known Iraqi composer who spearhead’s the newly-established ‘Organization for Culturing and Care of Iraq Children’ (OCCIC) and it was through his efforts that the plight of some of the Iraqi children who needed medical treatment, not available in Iraq, was highlighted.
Except the wheelchair-bound Sajjad, the rest of the eight Iraqi children were born with partial and complete hearing impairments. As a result of their deafness they could not speak and the only way they communicated with their loved ones was through lip-reading.
“The cost of the cochlear implants excluding the surgery is BD 10,000 alone. Only Salmaniya Hospital performs such treatment in Bahrain and according to a study done at the hospital in 2006 our success rate with the entire procedure is 95 per cent,” comments Dr Ahmed Jamal, ENT specialist at Salmaniya hospital who was part of the team treating the Iraqi children.
“Because this is such an expensive procedure we could never have been able to pay for it. Had it not been for our generous patron Noor would still be deaf,” says Mohammad Abdul Hadi, Noor’s father who accompanied her to Bahrain.
But the generosity did not stop at the treatment of all the children. All their expenses regarding boarding and lodging were met, “In fact the children got to go to the zoo and the funfairs also,” adds Afaq.
She feels a special bond with the Bahrainis who have helped her son regain his lost future. “Yahya is a keen mathematician and now he will resume his school and be like the rest of the children,” she says.
During their stay in Bahrain all eight children underwent operations and under the watchful eyes of the hospital staff were introduced to the cochlear programme. “It is a gradual process which involves a whole lot of staff like the speech therapists as they have to teach the children how to recognize the sounds,” added Dr Ahmed Jamal.
The children will have to continue with the speech therapy programme for two years, or even longer. “The doctors and the speech therapists have given us all the information we need to continue with the programme and we will stay in touch with them via e-mail,” says Afaq.
But like any medical care, cochlear implants require regular follow ups. It essentially needs spare parts and maintenance every three to four months that has to be provided by a specialist. “We have put an application to the Ministry of Health regarding the necessary measures that are required after the programme is implanted to the patient and they have to get back to us in that regard,” says Dr Ahmed Jamal.
Sama wants to be a doctor and eventually her mother wants to see her married and settled. Sara loves to paint and Yousaf is an avid sketcher. Mohanad loves motor-racing and wants to return to the kingdom for the Formula One. As the children and their families set off from the shores of Bahrain they are excited to be reunited with their siblings and return to their devastated country that they call home.
The parents go with the strong hope and prayers that the aftercare that the doctors at Salmaniya hospital have promised them will come through. Six-year-old Ghosun’s father hopes that some day he is able to return to Bahrain with his other two children who suffer from the same disability so that the rest of them will have the same chance to a brighter future that Ghosun has today.
Exclusive report by Asma Salman.