Smitha Arunachalam, a person with hearing disability from Kochi, India, has had a miserable few days owing to the lockdown brought into effect to contain the spread of coronavirus pandemic.
Her normal life was thrown out of gear after she ran out of batteries of her hearing aid.“Living life inaudible is not easy and it gets tough without the assistive device. I couldn’t work for two weeks because my hearing aid stopped working, reports New Indian Express.
“I live in Fort Kochi and the lockdown was declared when I went to visit my parents at Paravoor. I was stranded and couldn’t get in touch with the shop from where I purchase the batteries. I made minimal use of the aid to extend the battery life but eventually, it ran out,” says 44-year-old Smitha, who works in the billing section of a wholesale drugstore in Kochi.
Lack of repairing shops and unavailability of batteries for assistive devices during the lockdown have landed thousands of persons with hearing disabilities in the lurch.
The 24×7 helpline numbers launched by NISH are flooded with calls. According to officials, the helpline desk received around 216 distress calls with a majority of them relating to the unavailability of batteries and damaged hearing aid devices.
