IT’S Hearing Awareness Week and one Mandurah local is encouraging residents to get a hearing check.
John Buttery has spent most of his life with bad hearing as he was left too long on his one side as a premature baby, damaging to his left ear.
Puss would flow out of his ears and he would have many ear aches as a child, until he finally had the damaged parts removed.
However, he continued with a hearing problem until he was in his 50s and like many people, avoided doing anything about it.
“I had a boss at the time who told me that if I didn’t get my hearing fixed I was out of a job,” Mr Buttery said.
“If that hadn’t have happened I wouldn’t have done anything for a while.
“I was on the verge of getting it fixed, but it still would have been another five years or so.
“This incident woke me up and put in a position where I had to something about it.”
Audiology Australia director Robert Cowan said hearing is something people take for granted until they start to lose it.
While hearing loss is an ‘unseen’ disability, it is widespread in the community – affecting some 15 per cent of Australians or one in every six people.
“Unfortunately hearing loss increases with age and so it is expected that up to one in four Australians will have some form of hearing loss by 2050,” associate professor Robert Cowan said.
“A lot of people are unaware they actually have a hearing loss, or underestimate the impact it is having on their work or family life and so delay doing something about a hearing loss.
“Hearing Awareness Week provides us with a good reminder to think about our hearing and decide if it’s time to visit a hearing clinic, have a quick, simple and pain-free hearing check and learn about the wide range of assistive listening devices and hearing technology currently available.”