Hearing Aid Bank

 Our first task, when a 2-3 month old baby is presented to us, is to awaken the nascent hearing center of the brain by exposing it to sound.  The matter is urgent: we must reach the brain while it is still receptive. Because an artificial hearing aid is one of the keys to this process, we must have a suitable selection at hand.

The infant will use external hearing aids until he is judged fit to have Cochlear hearing aids implanted in one or both of his ears. Those who are not suited to implantation or receive only one implant, will use our hearing aids for the months it takes us to match hearing aid to the child and advise the parents on purchasing. Here again, we have to have a sufficient number, and a sufficient variety of instruments at our disposal.

Our Hearing Aid Loaner bank has the following purposes:

•  It is difficult to say which hearing aid is fit for each baby (we can’t just ask a 3 month old). We fit the baby with different brands from our bank and test his\her hearing periodically and only when we are convinced which is best for him, we recommend to the parents to purchase.

• Since the government pays the family only 3,500 shekels for each hearing aid ( 7,000 for both ears) and 2 hearing aids cost 5,000$, some of our families can’t find the money and we loan them hearing aids from the bank for an unlimited period of time.

• When a child goes to a cochlear implantation surgery on one ear, he still needs a hearing aid on the other and he gets it temporarily from our bank.         Sometimes repeated ear infections affect the child’s hearing and he needs a different aid for a few months which he gets from the loaner bank.