By Esther Onyegbula

A humanitarian service group, Prestige Elite Club of Nigeria, has called on the Federal government through the National Orientation Agency to live up to its responsibility by raising awareness and promoting ear and hearing care across the country.

The group made the call, recently, at a two-day sensitization program to celebrate World Hearing Day 2024 at S-TEE Schools and Nazareth Schools in Festac, Lagos.

Speaking at the event, the President, Prestige Elite Club of Nigeria, Ukhun Ehidiamen Anthony, said: “The National Orientation Agency needs to take the advocacy on ear and hearing care to the nook and crannies of the country because of its massive reach. They need to go digital because there are a lot of youths out here in the digital space whom they need to reach. There’s a whole lot of work for the National Orientation agency to do and I believe they can do this and many more. Unfortunately, the agency seems to be moribund and non-existent.”

According to Ukhun, “The events are part of the organisation’s mission to educate young children on how to listen safely to avoid hearing loss. According to the WHO, over 1.5 billion people live with some degree of hearing loss, and this number is expected to rise to 2.5 billion by 2050. However, most cases of hearing loss can be prevented, identified, and treated, if the community is educated on ear and hearing care.

“We are proud to celebrate World Hearing Day 2024 with these ear and hearing care programs, which are part of our commitment to provide humanitarian services to our community. We believe that hearing well is essential to learning well and living well, and we hope that these programs will help our students and teachers to appreciate the value of their hearing and to adopt healthy habits to protect and preserve it.

“We have found out that people are still ignorant about ear and ear care so we decided to take it upon ourselves as a club because one of our focal points is education and we believe health education is part of education. That is why we decided to bring this message to schools. Let’s try to catch people young to prevent them from experiencing hearing loss in the future. I believe when people are educated and they understand what they need to do to prevent hearing loss, they’d do the needful to have a healthy hearing.”

Explaining the choice of the schools used, Vice President Prestige Elite Club of Nigeria, Moreen Anyawu said: “We chose S-TEE Schools and Nazareth Schools in Festac, because of the age range of the students, and at this age, the children are open to learning. When people are educated, especially children, it will go a long way to engineer a social change and behavioural shift from the behaviours that would expose young people unduly to hearing loss, to more healthy behaviours.”

Appreciating the initiative of the club, The Cooperate Head S-TEE Schools, Juliet Keshinro, said that the event was very timely with the current trend of young people going

around with an earpiece and some sleep with it which can cause some health issues that could endanger them in the future.