NEONATAL HEARING SCREENING IN DEVELOPING COUNTRY ITS CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

Firozbakht M, Ansari Dezfouli M, Noparas Z, Ped and colleagues.

Welfare State Organization, Tehran, Iran.

Iran is one of the Middle East countries with more than 70 millions population and near one million births each year. According to international reports Iran is one of lower middle income country.

In developing country we face with the facts that have different quality and dimension in compare with developed country, we try to show these differences in addition we suggest some measure to deal with them.

The implementation of any new health program particularly the promotive one is a chief challenge for its supporter in developing country, because at least there are other serious health problem which demanded by the people . In hierarchy of priority the promotive program such as screening rests in lower rank.

Near 10 years ago in one of governmental organization called WSO (welfare state organization) that primarily provide health service for disabled patients the idea of providing a health service that’s main purpose is prevention of hearing disability for neonates (through neonatal hearing screening), look like unnecessary. In other word spending of insufficient budget of a public organization for a target group (neonates) who are not routine customers (disabled patients) despite its acceptable CBA perceived unnecessary.

We implement and appraised different action plans and finally we found that without participation of private sector the achieving of the main objects is impossible.

We will address our main achievements and challenges at the moment. If we have enough time or during the panel we will present the latest results of EHDI in Iran.

We had presented our preliminary report of NHS in Iran at NHS 2006 at Como in Italy and also presented the first national report of EHDI in Iran at NHS 2008.

E-mail: DEZFOULI2001@YAHOO.COM