Kinder in anderen Ländern

CI for Angel changed life in our home

by
Angel, Uganda

I wish to thank you so much for the support towards my daughters implant.  It has changed life in our home with happiness.

We are able to communicate which was not there before.  Angel is full of life, stress free because she can express herself.  Thank you so much for i cannot thank you enough.
I would also like to take this opportunity to share with you Angel’s amazing progress. Angel now has over 100 words as you can watch in the video.
Looking forward to continued communication.
Regards,
Justine Lubanga

Supporting Children with Hearing loss in Romania. Evelina’s case

by

Evelina, a beautiful girl aged 3 and a half, deaf, she became a bilateral CI user in January . Until now she was been wearing cochlear implant on her right ear and she has been attending therapy sessions together with her mother and grandmother at Koala NGO, based in Bucharest. Her parents are both deaf and communicate through sign language, but they wanted their child has access to sound and learn how to speak. Recently, her sister was born and their family routines are changing. One day, she was left unattended for a few moments and she threw her new processor in the toilet and flushed the water. The processor was gone and the family couldn’t afford a new one. Both of Evelina’s parents are deaf, the family income is provided only by the father and the family is struggling financially, with low-income. The family lives together with the maternal grandparents who have normal hearing.

Alice Popa, founder and therapist at Koala NGO, reached out to Lehnhardt Stiftung with the hope they might assist in securing second-hand processor for Evelina. Monika Lehnhardt and Liubov Wolowik were very receptive to our request and shortly after getting in contact, they sent a new processor for Evelina, who is now able to hear again with both her ears. It was very important for Evelina to regain access to sound again because she is very recently implanted on her second ear and the period after implant activation is crucial in order to ensure auditive-verbal rehabilitation through adequate auditive stimulation.

Read more

Support for Children with Hearing Impairments in Kenya

by

In Kenya, access to resources for children with hearing impairments is limited, and many face challenges with outdated equipment and insufficient educational support. Regular classrooms are often noisy, and there is a significant need for FM systems, therapy, and other accommodations. Our Newborn Hearing Screening Project serves a rural community with a population of over 10 million people, and we currently screen about 1,000 children per week. However, more than 200 children and adults in the region still need hearing assistive devices. Most rely on donations, as their families cannot afford to purchase hearing aids.

My son received a cochlear implant (CI) in 2015 at the age of 3. He is now in Grade 5 at a mainstream school, where his speech and language development is excellent. However, his current processor is outdated, and the model (Nucleus 6) has been phased out, making it difficult to find necessary accessories.

The Lehnhardt Foundation has been instrumental in supporting our efforts with donations of hearing aids, FM systems, and speech processors. This collaboration was formed after the CIICA conference.

The demand continues to exceed available resources. Programs like ours are vital in providing early intervention, and sustained support is essential to help children with hearing loss succeed in school and life. We are deeply grateful for any support to continue providing these life-changing resources to children in need.

Sincerely,
Stephen Kittur, Speech Language Pathologist
Director of Children’s Speech and Hearing Loss Organisation, Kenya

Violetta – the sole recipient of a cochlear implant from the company Advanced Bionics in Belarus – was in need. With united forces we could help.

by

One year – this can be a short but also a long time. For Violetta Kovreckaja from Vitebsk – the cultural capital in the North of Belarus, close to the border with Latvia, where Marc Chagall was born – it meant 12 long months of waiting.  It finally took that long until we could provide her with a replacement speech processor and an Online fitting session.

Violetta experienced her cochlear implantation at the University clinic in Ferrara in 2012. For the parents this meant a big financial effort. Luckily a few foundations contributed to cover the costs. For a couple of years Violetta and her parents travelled to Italy again and again to have the fittings of her speech processor. However, 5 year ago it was for the last time.

For over 8 years the now 13 years old schoolgirl has been wearing her Harmony, all this time he was serving her well, but now it was not functioning properly any longer.

In Belarus there is an established CI programme financed by the government. Within the framework of the annually advertised tenders, however, cochlear implants were bought from two manufacturers but not from Advanced Bionics so far. Consequently there is no chance to get an upgrade speech processor from Advanced Bionics under the programme financed by the government.

We – the Lehnhardt Foundation – effectively supported by Jan Röhrig (Deaf Ohr Alive – Hessen Rhein Main), found a donor who was ready to pass his Naida Q 90 which he did not need any longer to Violetta. We sent it to Vitebsk.

The “only thing” that was needed to organize was the fitting of the SP. Natalya Kalintscheva, a representative of the company Advanced Bionics, helped to arrange it. She also sent the necessary equipment from Moscow to a business partner, Timur Nurseitov (Fonamed) in Minsk. Technical questions concerning the remote fitting and the programming were solved by Ruslan Kertiev, also from Moscow. Already before that he offered a preparatory training for the personnel in Minsk, so that the session could happen without any problems.

Ing. Evgenija V. Burak and the surdopedagog Liubov A. Proschina from the ENT scientific-practical Center of the Republic of Belarus (RNPZ) in Minsk (http://www.lor.by) supported the family professionally and with a high level of empathy.

With united forces we succeeded: Violetta is happy and can continue to attend and thanks to good hearing perform well in normal school.

Dr. Monika Lehnhardt-Goriany
August 2021

www.lehnhardt-stiftung.org

Photo: Andrej A. Razhko und Julia V. Razhko (parents), Evgenija V. Burak und Violetta

“Violetta pursues her hobby painting with great enthusiasm”

WORLD NEWS – THE LEHNHARDT FOUNDATION – Charity projects under Corona conditions

by

Publikation in EURO-CIU December 2020

The Corona crisis is having a profound effect on all areas of life as we are all experiencing.

We at the Lehnhardt Foundation also had to learn that the otherwise not easy handling of charity projects for deaf children who are supposed to receive a hearing implant did not become easier during this time.  Moreover, if these affected children coming from non-European countries are to be provided with a CI system in Germany, the task becomes even more complex under these conditions.

Read more

Faruch aus UsbekistanФарух из УзбекистанаFaruch aus Usbekistan

by

Erzählt von Regina Wolfram, Oktober 2015

Faruch 1Fast zwei Jahre sind es jetzt her, seitdem sich ein großes Wunder in der Familie Tulkunschanov ereignete: für ihren damals vierjährigen Sohn öffnete sich die Welt des Hörens. Lange konnte Mutter Nargiza es nicht fassen, dass ihr kleiner Sohn wirklich hören kann. Für sie war es ein langersehnter Traum, der in Erfüllung ging. Rückblickend erzählt Nargiza von ihren Schmerzen, Hoffnungen und Ängsten, die sie in dieser Zeit durchgemacht hat. Nach der gelungenen OP und Anpassung des CI hatte sie zeitweise immer noch Angst, irgendwann aufwachen zu müssen und festzustellen, dass dies alles nur ein Traum gewesen ist.
Doch die Realität beweist das Gegenteil.

Unser auch damals schon so lebhafter Faruch zeigt nun der Familie, wo es langgeht. Und zwar nicht nur mit Gesten und Mimik. Jetzt, wo er langsam sprechen lernt, verteilt er schon gerne Anweisungen: besonders an seine ältere Schwester Gavhar. Ihren Namen kann er am besten aussprechen. Immer wenn er etwas haben möchte, ruft er ihren Namen und sagt ihr, was sie zu tun hat. Wörter, die er noch nicht kennt, füllt er dann schon gerne mit seinen eigenen auf- denn er möchte mit den Erwachsenen mithalten und in ganzen Sätzen reden.

Read more

Der große TagThe big dayThe big day

by

Erzählt von Klaus Gollnick, Juli 2015

 
AymanVier Wochen können eine lange Zeit sein, wenn man auf solch ein lebensveränderndes Ereignis wartet, wie es eine erste Anpassung jedesmal ist. Ayman’s Eltern hatten zwar schon mit der gesamten Familie und Freunden den glücklichen Ausgang der Operation gefeiert, aber die erste Anpassung, die Ayman in die Welt des Hörens bringen würde, war ein Ereignis, das mit nichts vergleichbar war, was sie bisher erlebt hatten.

Der 27. Mai 2015 war der große Tag, an dem die Anpassung im Ear Care Center in Khartoum vorgenommen wurde, und Ayman’s erste Reaktion, als er das erste Geräusch wahrnahm, war nichr verwunderlich- er fing an zu weinen, überwältigt von dem, was mit ihm geschah.

Read more

Budoor´s langer und weiter Weg in die Welt des Hörens

by

Erzählt von Monika Lehnhardt, Mai 2015

BudoorEs war das zweite Mal in ihrem Leben, dass Budoor ALI AHMED AL-GUDARI aus Sanaa nach Deutschland kam, in der Hoffnung, wieder hören zu können. 1988 reiste sie als damals 5 jähriges Mädchen mit ihrem Vater zum ersten Mal an. Auch im Jemen hatte sich die Nachricht verbreitet, dass es in Deutschland Ärzte gibt, die taube Menschen aus der Stille holen. Zwei Namen standen auf der Empfehlungsliste – Banfai und Lehnhardt. Warum sie damals bei Banfai in Köln landeten, konnten sie nach so langer Zeit nicht mehr nachvollziehen. Budoor erhielt ein Cochlear Implant der Firma 3 M, von dem sie leider nur sehr eingeschränkt profitierte bis es gänzlich ausfiel.

Der Weg zu einer höheren Ausbildung war dadurch mit größten Anstrengungen verbunden. Immer weniger konnte sie verstehen, warum ihre Familie, Menschen in ihrer Umgebung offensichtlich Angst um sie hatten. Sie hörte nicht, wenn in der Nähe geschossen wurde, wenn Granaten einschlugen. Sie geriet zunehmend in Gefahr. Vater und Tochter beschlossen, den Weg nach Deutschland erneut anzutreten und hofften, mit zehn tausend Euro in der Tasche ein neues Cochlea Implantat für Budoor zu bekommen. Diese Hoffnung zerschlug sich schnell – in Berlin erklärte ihnen ein Hals-Nasen-Ohren Arzt, dass die Kosten mit Operation und Aufenthalt im Krankenhaus ein Vielfaches betragen würde. Zu allem Übel wurden dem Vater wenige Tage später seine zehn tausend Euro gestohlen. Das polizeiliche Protokoll sprach nüchtern von Taschendieben. Eine Aussicht, diese zu finden gäbe es praktisch nicht.

Read more