On a typical evening in the Tal-El home in Baka, Israel, fifteen-year-old Tamar is chatting on her cell phone while her twin sister Dana listens to music. Nothing seems unusual until one is told that both Tamar and Dana were born profoundly deaf. Modern technology, the digital hearing aid and especially the cochlear implant have enabled them to live a very normal life.
The twins were first diagnosed when they were just over two years old. They received conventional hearing aids and were taught traditional signing and speech. But the Tal-Els were not satisfied, and, at age three, Dana and Tamar became two of the first Israelis to undergo cochlear implants. In May 2004, at age 14, they became the first Israelis to undergo a cochlear implant in the second ear.
As miraculous as it is, Elaine (Ayala) Tal-El, the twins’ mother, says that the cochlear implant still cannot replace the human ear. “Technology is a critical element in the formula for success for the hearing impaired, but it’s the rehabilitation that really makes the difference,” she explained.
Elaine and Eli Tal-El chose a controversial approach to rehabilitate their daughters, known as the AV (audio-verbal) method. According to this method, children are immersed in an audio environment. They are not permitted to lip read or use any other visual cues, and are integrated into the educational mainstream from the beginning.
There are other methods for speech rehabilitation used in Israel. They include the multi-sensory method which combines visual, lip reading, hearing and written communication in order to obtain maximum sensorial input; the total communication approach combining signing and speech; and methods that focus almost exclusively on signing.
Approximately 10 percent of the population in Israel is hearing impaired according to Bekol, an organization for hard of hearing and deafened adults. Some of the people suffer from “acquired deafness”, which occurs after childhood as a result of disease, accident, or aging. Experts estimate that in Israel, 1 to 1.2 hearing impaired children are born per 1,000 live births, which is similar to the rate for most of the developed world.
Improved technology provides parents with new options, but they still face a wide array of social and bureaucratic difficulties. The cost of raising a hearing-impaired child is just one of those difficulties.
Currently, there have been about 800 cochlear implants performed in Israel, the overwhelming majority on children. The cost of one cochlear implant for minors under 18 is fully covered by law. But the cost of a second implant, considered important for allowing the hearing impaired individual to achieve maximal comprehension, is not covered.
Parents of hearing impaired children receive a total disability allowance of approximately NIS 2,000 a month from National Insurance Institute. This is supposed to cover rehabilitative therapy sessions. According to Tal-El, parents can get between 50 per cent and 70 per cent of the cost of the therapy back from their sick fund.
