This program is supported by the government and the Ministry of Health, is accessible throughout the country and is completely free, including technological updates.
Every year around 30 children are candidates for an implantable high-tech device to achieve language rehabilitation and social integration.
Today humanity celebrates International Cochlear Implant Day, a technique that has benefited more than 500 deaf and deaf-blind people, especially children, in Cuba.
On this day in 1957, the world's first cochlear implantation was performed by French doctors André Djourno and Charles Eyries, who made history by enabling a completely deaf person to hear.
Among the specialized services of the Cuban health system is the National Cochlear Implant Program, which has been in development for 25 years and focuses on children with multiple disabilities, including deaf-blindness.
This technique is an electronic device that converts sound signals into electrical signals that are sent to the brain and interpreted as sound.
Cuba performed the first single-channel extracochlear implantation in 1987, and ten years later multichannel intracochlear implantation began at Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital in Havana.
The program adopts a multidisciplinary, inter-institutional and multi-sectoral approach to the specialized service in cochlear implants and complex ear surgery, based at the Borrás-Marfán Children's Hospital in the capital, which is connected to all provinces of the country.
Every year, around 30 children are candidates for a high-tech implantable device to achieve language rehabilitation and social integration, said Dr. Sandra Bermejo, specialist in otolaryngology and head of the above-mentioned special service, told Prensa Latina.
To date, 565 implants (including 10 bilateral) have been performed on 552 patients (38 deaf-blind), and more than 100 possible candidate children are currently in the evaluation process, the specialist explained.
This program, Bermejo emphasized, is supported by the government and the Ministry of Health, is accessible to the entire country and is completely free, including technological updates.
