TEHRAN – The Komak Charity Foundation has initiated a campaign under the title of ‘Kind Wednesday’ to encourage Iranians to provide cochlear implant (CI) for hearing-impaired kids instead of buying fireworks on Chaharshanbeh-Suri.

Chaharshanbeh-Suri, an old tradition of Iranians jumping over the fire which is practiced every last Tuesday night of Iranian calendar year, is replaced by dangerous firework display during recent years.

The charity, which has been established by actress Katayun Riahi in Tehran to help children with hearing disabilities, have launched the campaign so that people not to spend money on fireworks, which harms hearing ability.

Fireworks endanger hearing and visual abilities of people so the charity decides to initiate a campaign to replace fireworks with obtaining CI for three children who cannot afford the operation,” charity manager Gelayol Ta’ati announced in a press release.

CI surgery is more efficient for children under four years old, however, due to its expenses many families cannot afford it, she explained.

She said that the charity provide the expense for 100 first days of speech-language pathology sessions.

According to cochlear.com, a cochlear implant is an electronic medical device that replaces the function of the damaged inner ear. Unlike hearing aids, which make sounds louder, cochlear implants do the work of damaged parts of the inner ear (cochlea) to provide sound signals to the brain.

It can help people who have moderate to profound hearing loss in both ears, who have profound hearing loss in one ear with normal hearing in the other ear, who receive little or no benefit from hearing aids and who score 65% or less on sentence recognition tests done by hearing professional in the ear to be implanted.

Many adults with cochlear implants hear better with a cochlear implant than with a hearing aid.

A previous study has shown that people with cochlear implant achieve an average of 80% sentence understanding, compared with 10% sentence understanding for hearing aids.

SB/MQ/MG