Mr. Samuel Kwasi Asare, President of Ghana National Association of the Deaf (GNAD), has called on the Ministry of health to ensure compulsory screening of newly born babies for early detection of deafness and intervention.

He said due to ignorance, many people attribute deafness to spiritual punishment. Mr. Asare made the call on Monday at a media to usher in the annual celebration of the International Week of the Deaf.
The annual event held between the third and fourth week of September is the initiative of the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) to provide opportunity for the deaf to come together to showcase their achievements, language and difficulties.

The theme for this year’s celebration is ‘Overcoming The Communication and Stigmatization Challenges of the Deaf – The Way Forward.’The GNAD president said due to many misconceptions about disease, the deaf in Ghana have been denied adequate education, right to political participation, employment and other social activities.
Mr. Asare said deafness does not mean that a person is dumb since the deaf communicate through sign language which is language on its own, “therefore, people should stop referring to us as deaf and dumb persons and simply call us the deaf.”

He said the challenge of the deaf to discern and interpret sound and difficulty on the part of the hearing to understand the sign language has created a wide communication gap between the deaf and those who hear.Mr. Asare said in developed countries, various mechanisms such as skills and technologies have been evolved to bridge the communication gap saying “sign language has particularly remained a major avenue of enhancing communication between the hearing and the deaf.” “Unfortunately, in the case of Ghana, the interest and rate of sign language literacy is very discouraging while the alternative technological devices are either non-existent or beyond the affordability of majority of the deaf,” he said.

Mr. Asare asked the Special Education Division of the Ghana Education Service to organize sign language workshops, especially for teachers of deaf schools, to improve the situation. He said University of Winneba can also improve the situation by enhancing the learning of sign language to trainee teachers of the deaf.

Source: The Ghanaian Times

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