Background: This study aimed on identifying children with hearing, speech and language disorders in rural population that are not identified, diagnosed or rehabilitated yet. The study also focused on collecting a large data with increased study duration to give an appropriate representation of the findings in a rural population.Methods: Subjective tests were used to screen for hearing, speech and language disorders.Results: On performing audiological and speech language tests, 130 children were found to have hearing, speech and language disorders out of 1,453 children.Conclusions: The findings of this study indicate that there is a need to create an awareness and importance in identifying hearing and speech language disorders. This can be done by setting up clinics in rural areas, thus improving the accessibility of these diagnostic and rehabilitative services.

There is a considerable debate on the use of hearing aid in children with auditory dys-synchrony (AD). To current date there are no similar Studies which show the effect of acoustic amplification on outcomes on speech and language development in children with AD are found in the literature. Thus, in the present study three children diagnosed to have AD were recruited and subjected to hearing aid trial and fitting based on the late latency response thresholds. Ranging from 7 months to 41 months of intervention period, each child’s language age was reassessed and compared with that of their pre-therapy language age. The comparison showed a good improvement in receptive age, though the children had moderate to severe degree of hearing loss. But their expressive age was significantly delayed irrespective of their age of identification and duration of intervention. Thus the delay in expression with a good amount of improvement in reception can be a characteristic of an AD child with amplification.

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