Gaza children running out of time to treat blast-induced hearing loss

Wateen al-Ajrami was just more than a year old when the blast shook the simple storage room in northern Gaza’s Jabalia that her extended family were sheltering in. Her mother, Mariam, explains that Wateen was standing next to a door at the moment of the Israeli strike in August last year. Recommended Stories list of 3 items end of list Mariam grabbed Wateen, seeing the fear in her eyes as the child covered her ears and screamed. But there were no apparent physical injuries. Wateen wasn’t bleeding or had any fractures, and there was no shrapnel embedded in her. Two or three days later, Mariam and her family started noticing something alarming. “I would call Wateen and she wouldn’t respond… I would speak to her and there was no reaction,” Mariam says, adding that Wateen would point to her ears. A hearing test scheduled by a medical specialist soon revealed what Mariam had begun to fear: Wateen had almost completely lost her hearing due to the impact of the explosion. The young girl had suffered approximately 85 percent hearing loss in her left ear, and 90 percent in her right ear, generally classified as between severe and profound hearing loss. “It was an extremely shocking moment… Your child is healthy, just beginning to say her first words, and suddenly the doctor tells you she has lost her hearing,” Mariam says, her eyes filling with tears. According to Mariam, the doctor explained that the cause was the blast wave from the strike. …