By Fatoumatta K Jallow
Mr. Gabo Jarju from the Ministry of health and social welfare has stressed the need for the rights of the deaf people in the Gambia to be promoted.
Mr. Jarju was speaking during the International Week for the Deaf held on Thursday, 22 September, 20016 at Gambia Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (GADHOH) office in Kanifing.
According to him, the International Week of the Deaf is an initiative of the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) and it was first launched in Rome, Italy 58 years ago. Since then, he said it is celebrated annually by the global deaf community in the last full week of September, the same month the first World Congress of the WFD was held.
Jarju defined deafness as a partial or complete loss of hearing and may be conductive or sensorineural. “Conductive deafness results from disorders of the external ear, eardrum, middle ear and acoustic link to the inner ear; sensorineural (nerve deafness) results from disorders in the inner ear,” he said.
He however stressed the need for more advocacy work to create awareness in this area to reduce the incidence of hearing loss or deafness. “This indeed is an essential part of development,” he said. Jarju added that his Ministry is and will always
