In one remote community, figures show more than 94 per cent of children in grades one to three have some form of hearing loss. The community is not, like you might think, in a third world country but in WA’s North West.
It’s a figure which
appals Harvey Coates, a paediatric ENT surgeon who has spent the past
35 years travelling to remote areas to treat a disease which has hit
more than 100,000 people; the majority of them Aboriginal children.