From 29th June to 2nd July 2021, a combined training event in the field of hearing impairment and curriculum development followed by a training for Universal Newborn Hearing Screening (UNHS) will be carried out with and at our long-term project partner institution Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS). The event will be accessible both at MUHAS and online.
On the German side, the event will be led by Prof. Dr. Ulrike Lüdtke of the Institute for Special Education (IfS) in the frame of the current projects „SpeechBase - Speech, Language and Hearing Resources for Sub-Saharan Africa“ and „HEAR Africa! Extending life and education opportunities for hearing-impaired children in Tanzania“, in cooperation with the Leibniz Lab for Relational Communication (both LUH), Prof. Prof. h.c. Dr. med. Thomas Lenarz (MHH), Prof. Dr. Anke Lesinski-Schiedat and PD Dr. Angelika Illg of the German HearingCentre (DHZ) and Lars Rumberg of the Institute for Information Technology (tnt).
The superordinate aim of SpeechBase is a free-access web platform with content for education, research, curriculum development and training in the field of Speech-Language Therapy (SLT). The planned event is a great opportunity for capacity building in the clinical focus (hearing impairment). Basic knowledge about etiology, prevalence and comorbidities worldwide, in East Africa and Europe, as well as about medical interventions will be presented and discussed. Curriculum development in Tanzania will be integrated as a possibility to implement sustainable structures for SLT. The UNHS focuses on capacity building by training UNHS screeners. A further UNHS training is planned later this year taking place at our project partner institution Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC) in Moshi.