Malaria and the Senses

This blog is categorised as "Curiosity in a field I know nothing about"

As my regular readers will know, we have a deaf child at the Twiga Centre, Simon, who is around 8 years old. As a baby of about 5 months, he contracted malaria and as a result [?] became deaf. Consequently, he has never learned to talk.

While I am wasting away in the UK, I am looking for ways that we may be able to help Simon; top of the list is to see if he responds to hearing aids, and I have received several from well-wishers.

But, my curiosity is asking me questions that I cannot answer. Why does malaria affect hearing (or sight, come to that)? Does it attack the mechanical bits in the ear itself, does it damage the nerves between the ear and the brain, or dies it damage the brain itself? Or, is there no one cause of deafness after malaria?

Having no knowledge of medical matters, tropical diseases and their effects, or the workings of the brain, I set about trying to work this out logically.

I only know of two people who have had adverse effects to their senses after contracting malaria, Simon, who has lost his hearing, and a Twitter friend, whose sight was severely affected after contracting the disease.

As far as I know, sight and hearing are not connected, so it would seem logical that it is a part of the brain that is affected by the illness rather than the primary organs themselves.

If this is the case, will a hearing aid help Simon? Is there any treatment, however intrusive, that could restore his hearing? I need to know.

So, I put out a plea to the doctors and hearing specialists who read blogs, who Tweet, or who stumble over this blog by other means Please can you satisfy my curiosity and possibly help this boy to regain some form of hearing, and eventually the ability to talk.

The Sound Of Silence

Simon is about eight years old. He is a stocky, healthy-looking child with an open face and ready smile, but he is deaf. I don’t know quite how deaf he is. If I clap my hands loudly enough, he will sometimes hear it (or sense the air pressure?), and if I make a loud, high-pitched sound with a reed, he will hear that. In fact, he gets quite excited when he hears it, which leads me to believe that he doesn’t hear much else.

When Simon was a baby, about five months old, he contracted malaria. As far as I know, he was taken to hospital and treated, but then lost his hearing. I don’t know if this loss was as a result of the malaria, the treatment or coincidence – I am not a doctor.

So, Simon is deaf. As he lost his hearing at such an early age, he has never learned to talk. He makes sounds, but I don’t know if he can hear them. He knows that when he makes a sound, people will look at him and he can then sign to them, or use facial expressions to convey something.

As is common in Africa, Simon appears to be left to his own devices by his family. Children with “disabilities” are not useful. In fact, some can be considered a burden on the family, something that depletes already scarce resources such as food. I am not saying that Simon is treated as a burden, but he is often seen wandering around when other children are at school.

We believe that Simon is bright. He shows an aptitude for photography. For a child of his age, he takes well-framed, in-focus photos. He is fascinated with photography and understands how to use the different functions of the camera when shown.

We would love to help Simon, but we do not have medical people on our staff, and we don’t have the financial resources to have his hearing (or lack of) tested.

• Would Simon benefit from a hearing aid? 
• Is his condition reversible? 
• If I take an old, discarded hearing aid to Kenya, will it do any good? 

We don’t know. I don’t suppose any doctor would like to hazard a guess without examining the child, but that is what I want you to do, hazard a guess as to why Simon is deaf and whether there is anything that can be done for him.

It is a shame; Kisii has an excellent school for the deaf, run by the deaf. But we cannot afford to send Simon there, and his family certainly can’t, so we will try to glean some authoritative guesses from the medical profession and work from there.