Dr. Diane Gashumba, the Minister for Health, said the training will be offered in collaboration with Starkey Hearing Foundation starting in the next two months.
The move was revealed in Kigali Friday after the exercise in which Starkey Hearing Foundation had treated 378 people with hearing problems.
“We are planning to have this foundation train health workers to take these services to the village level, and this is not hard to do,” said Minister Gashumba.
“Once that training is offered, we shall be assured that all Rwandans with auditory impairments will have treatment at ease.”
Dr Gashumba said the hearing problems are alarming in Rwanda and worldwide, calling for effective measures.
The 2012 census indicated that 466,453 Rwandans had disabilities with 8% among them having hearing impairments.
World Health Organisation (WHO) reports 466 million people with hearing impairments in 2018; among them 33 million are children.
Over 90% of the people with hearing problems are in developing countries.
Bill Austin, the CEO of Starkey Hearing Foundation, said the American charity targets to reach out to everyone in need of ear health care.
“We want to provide community health workers with skills they need to examine ears and treat their diseases from their communities,” he said.
The ear health care is currently offered in referral and district’s hospitals.
Reports indicate that most of the ear diseases and deafness are caused by other diseases that are not properly treated but sometimes are also innate problems.
There are currently 45,516 community health workers across Rwanda.
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