Global Epidemic of Hearing Loss: Challenges and Opportunities for Pakistan

Abstract

Hearing is a special sense that across the lifetime allows us to engage with environment, communicate with fellow beings, express our thoughts, gain
education, seek employment and opportunities to improve quality and standard of lives for ourselves, our families and the communities we live in. It is not surprising that hearing loss, an invisible disability, can be devastating not only for the individual suffering from it but for their families, communities and society at large.

Burden of Hearing loss across the globe and in Pakistan:
On March 3rd , 2021 the World Health Organization (WHO) published the first-ever World Report on Hearing. This comprehensive document described
the global burden of hearing loss, its distribution amongst member nations and the status of hearing health care[1]. Concurrently, in an article published in The Lancet, the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2019 Hearing Loss Collaborators highlighted the trends in global hearing loss over the last 30 years and its impact on the years-lived with disability (YLD)[2]. Using the data from 1990 to 2019 the GBD group made predictions for 2050 that are a cause of concern
for health care systems, policy makers, people living with hearing loss and society at large. This is particularly of alarm for low- and middle-income countries such as Pakistan.