Graeme Nelson: Deaf deserve implant

Graeme Nelson thinks the deaf deserve a fair go.

My wife and I have been married for 46 years and all those years she has been deaf, and it has annoyed me that most people "ride rough shod" over people like her who have this disability.

If I were crippled I would have crutches or a wheelchair, if I were blind I would carry a white stick, but deaf people have no obvious signs like "these" of their condition apart from a pair of hearing aids which are mostly covered by their hair or a white badge pinned to their clothing saying "my hearing is impaired", which in general nobody reads anyway.

People who talk to both of us are always told of her hearing problem, but after a few minutes or so they end up talking to me only because she has not put any ideas into the conversation because she has missed some of the important words, and they generally totally ignore her and talk to me. There are the exceptions who make an effort.

In the shops, the assistants are told to talk to her because she lip-reads very well, but again after a couple of minutes they end up turning their backs on her to talk to the shelves or whatever, and she again has no idea what is going on.

Deafness in general can be repaired with a cochlear implant which is a recent innovation that can be surgically implanted under skin behind the ear, I understand from those who have them they work extremely well. But here is the next problem.

There are only 29 funded implants each financial year and at last count 79 people are on the waiting list. Naturally children come first at operation time. Next problem, medical insurance doesn't fund cochlear implants.

There is a large void between those who get implants and those who don't. If you can afford $60,000 you can have one tomorrow.

So why don't we give the deaf a fair go. If we kept back 30 per cent of the soldiers going to the world's trouble spots we could write off the whole waiting list of people waiting for an implant and fewer people would be in this "silent world".

If we kept back 60 per cent of the soldiers we could perhaps make a big dent in the list of people awaiting hip and knee replacement operations too.