The state government will launch an independent external review into Adelaide’s Women’s and Children’s Hospital for wrongly programming the cochlear implants of one in four children in its program, causing what are expected to be lifelong development problems.
It follows calls from the families of the 30 children affected for an independent investigation, with the cause of the problems still unclear nearly a year after the hospital was alerted to the issue.
Six-year-old Logan Smedley is one of at least 30 children whose cochlear implant fitted at the hospital was not mapped correctly, meaning he could not hear many sounds crucial to learning to listen and speak.
“As a result of the hospital’s failure to turn up Logan’s cochlear implants over approximately four years, we believe he’s severely delayed in his hearing and his speech,” his father, Dale, said.
“It’s stressful, day in, day out.”
Read on at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-20/wch-hearing-bungle-leave-children-with-developmental-delays/102117512.
DAD Note: This happened in Australia not the USA/Canada.
