The Rotary Club International on Thursday donated 330 hearing aids worth 360 million cedis to the Hearing Assessment Centre of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi. The items are to be distributed to deaf institutions in the country. Professor George Wereko-Brobby, the Director of the Hearing Assessment Centre at KATH, said the centre is a collaborative centre recognized by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and has been able to, through research at the molecular level, to discover the cause of congenital deafness in Ghana. He said deafness acquired after birth in the tropics have been attributed to preventable infectious diseases like measles, mumps and meningitis. Prof Wereko-Brobby said Bechem and Jamasi schools for the Deaf in Brong-Ahafo and Ashanti region are to receive 100 each of the hearing aids while the remaining 130 would also be distributed to Cape Coast and Sekondi-Takoradi deaf institutions. Prof S.O. Asiamah, President of the Rotary Club of Kumasi who made the donation on behalf of the Rotary Club International, said Rotarians are always committed to support people to improve their living conditions. He said KATH, in collaboration with the Rotary Club of Kumasi East, has performed surgeries to treat 267 babies who had clubfoot deformities within the last two years. Prof Asiamah also said the club has been actively involved in the provision of boreholes for some communities in the Ashanti Region. He said the club has embarked on a Health, Hunger and Humanity (HHH) project at the cost of 950,000 dollars for some communities in the Ashanti Region and as part of the project presented two vehicles to Domeabra clinic near Tepa and Saint Martin's Catholic Hospital at Agroyesum. Miss Patience Yeboah Ampong, Director of Nursing, who received the items, expressed gratitude to the Rotary Club International. Prof Geoffrey K. Amedofu, Clinical Audiologist and Head of the Eye, Nose, Ear and Throat of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), said the country could not always rely on donations from abroad and appealed to the government to have a national policy on the procurement and distribution of hearing aids.Source: GNA