HEARING impaired children performed their “silent singing” at the second year of the Poprad Doctors’ Days event in early February. The children express music through dance and finger spelling.
“The performance was surely a success, and the children liked the High Tatras,” the head of the choir from Ostrava, Simona Pelhřimovská, told the TASR newswire.
“We came from the Elementary School for Students with Hearing Defects in Ostrava, as invited by the head of the children’s department in the Poprad hospital, Beáta Šoltýsová. Boys and girls are able to learn a new song in about two weeks, and I must say that I am often worse than them, they are more skilled. I have to learn the lyrics of the songs, which are adapted for finger spelling. Children like the music and enjoy attending the hobby group,” she said, adding that currently there are about 20 children in the choir.
Their perception of music depends on their level of hearing impairment. Some children in the choir use hearing devices, while others are completely deaf.
This was the Ostrava choir’s very first performance abroad, while at home in the Czech Republic they usually perform more than 10 concerts a year.
Poprad Doctors’ Days was attended by otorhinolaryngologists, paediatricians, general practitioners and neonatologists, and focused on discovering and healing hearing defects in newborns. Šoltýsová said that currently early diagnosis can help those with hearing defects lead a normal life. In Slovakia there are 1 to 1.4 cases per 1,000 newborn babies with a serious hearing impairment; and this rate grows from one to five percent in prematurely born babies. “Active screening of hearing defects can detect at least 80 percent of permanent hearing defects,” she added.
