Society for Assistance to Hearing Impaired Children (SAHIC) is a voluntary non-government organization established in February 1987 for prevention, early detection and rehabilitation of the hearing impaired, specially children in Bangladesh.
Ear Camps: The Society took Mobile Rural Ear Camp as its first project and organized the first ear camp in Feb 1990 at Kaligonj, Gazipur. The aim of the ear camp was to see the poor patients of the remotest villages of the country who are unable to seek help for their illness by going to big cities and towns due to financial and communication problems. The unprecedented enthusiasm and interest shown by the common people of the area towards the ear camp conducted at Gazipur inspired Ms. Rosi Gollmann and her colleagues from Andheri Hilfe e.V. Bonn, who had financed the camp, to such an extent that they expressed willingness to support continued organization of rural ear camps in the remotest places of the country, and committed financial and technical support to establish a Centre of excellence at Dhaka to train doctors and paramedics for effective prevention, early detection and rehabilitation of hearing impairment, specially in the children and treatment of ENT diseases that may cause hearing impairment amongst the population.
ENT Hospital: The hospital began operations July 199, with 20 general beds and 8 cabins, having the facilities to undertake all types of ENT and Head & Neck surgery, including microsurgeries in a well-equipped operation theatre. Almost every year, experts in the field of microsurgery from abroad visits the hospital to perform advanced surgeries to the benefits of its Junior Specialists/doctors, as well as the patients. The operation charges are fixed at a rate affordable to the common people on the basis of actual cost of materials and cost of personnel's with provision for 20% to 100% subsidy to the poor and destitute patients, on application to the authority stating their inability to pay the charges fixed by the authority. These facilities are open to all citizens of the country irrespective of age, sex, cast, creed and religion and no discrimination is made on any services. The aim of the services is to satisfy the need of the patients at any cost.
The Centre received the affiliation of Hearing International (H.I.), International Federation of Otorhinolaryngological Society (IFOS) and International Society of Audiologists (I.S.A.) due to satisfactory services rendered to the needy patients in the year 1997, and working in close cooperation with those international organizations, as well as WHO Society received a lot of support in respect of instrument, equipment, books, training of personnel from WHO for the Nationsl Centre for Hearing & Speech for Children, Specialized ENT Hospital, Hearing test laboratory and library.
