Australian hearing care centre comes to India

New Delhi, March 11 (IANS) An Australian audiology company, which has more than 180 clinics in Australia and New Zealand, has ventured into Asia for the first time with India as its destination. Indians make up 30 percent of its workforce, its CEO said Thursday.

"When we decided to venture into Asia, we were looking for a fast growing economy with a commitment to hearing healthcare - India topped our list in all these factors. Of course, the fact that 30 percent of our workforce, who are well trained professionals, are Indians also helped," Paul Mirabelle, CEO of National Hearing Care (NHC) told IANS after a press meet.

"Eighty percent of the Indian workforce are from the All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, Mysore. So we have a long tradition of Indian professionals working for us. And no, the recent controversy of assaults in Australia has not affected us," he added.

With major expansion plans in the pipeline, the NHC is looking at opening three centres in and around Delhi by the end of this month and another five by June.

"There is actually no fixed number of centres that we want to open in India. We are first planning to go to the metros like Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai and then venture into the smaller towns," Mirabelle said.

According to Mirabelle, what makes the company believe it will tick in India is the sheer size of the population who have some or the other form of a hearing impairment.

"There are approximately 60 million Indians who suffer from hearing problems. While the awareness to get yourself checked is slowly gathering pace, our aim is to further encourage people to go for screenings especially as their age advances," Mirabelle said.

"We are, however, not a hearing aid manufacturing company. Our work is to encourage people to come for checks and see if they have a problem and if they do, then assist them through a very sophisticated diagnostic process and rehabilitate them," he added.

According to statistics, more than 25,000 children are born deaf in India every year and eight-ten percent of the adult population has hearing problems. The health ministry has launched a project to focus on the prevention and diagnosis of such problems.