Experts seek wider access to speech, hearing care

Vice-Chancellor of Chrisland University, Prof. Oyedunni Arulogun.

Health experts have called for wider access to speech and hearing rehabilitation services in Nigeria, warning that delayed diagnosis and inadequate treatment could affect children’s development, education and social participation.

They urged the government to expand newborn and school-based hearing screening, strengthen early referral systems and integrate rehabilitation services into primary healthcare, particularly in rural communities.

The Vice-Chancellor of Chrisland University, Prof. Oyedunni Arulogun, and the National President of the Speech Pathologists and Audiologists Association in Nigeria, Dr Simeon Afolabi, made the call at the association’s 2026 Annual National Scientific Conference in Lagos.

Arulogun said limited access to specialists, financial constraints, late diagnosis and poor public awareness continued to prevent many Nigerians with communication disorders from receiving appropriate care.

She cited World Health Organisation estimates that more than 1.5 billion people globally live with some degree of hearing loss, while about 2.5 billion have health conditions that could benefit from rehabilitation.

She said, “The future of rehabilitation science must not be measured merely by the number of professionals trained, patients treated or research papers published, but by the extent to which people regain communication, participation, independence and dignity.”

The professor called for rehabilitation services to be integrated into primary healthcare centres, schools and community-based programmes to reduce the difficulties patients face accessing specialist care.

She also warned against providing hearing aids without proper clinical assessment, stressing that treatment decisions must be guided by patients’ needs rather than commercial interests.

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Arulogun further advocated culturally appropriate assessment tools, noting that Nigeria’s linguistic diversity required professionals to consider children’s language backgrounds when evaluating speech and communication development.

Afolabi, meanwhile, warned against inadequate professional training, rejecting the establishment of diploma and certificate programmes in speech-language therapy and audiology in Nigerian higher institutions.

“We do not and will not support the establishment of diploma or certificate programmes in Audiology and Speech-Language Therapy in any Nigerian higher institution,” he said.

“To allow such programmes is to deliberately open the door to quackery, compromise patient safety, devalue our hard-earned professional standards and reverse the gains we have made over the years.”

He called for full professional degree programmes that met required standards and were regulated by the Medical Rehabilitation Therapists Board of Nigeria.

Afolabi also urged parents to seek professional assessment when children showed signs of delayed speech or difficulty responding to sounds.

“We must work to make sure that our services do not stay in the cities alone, but go down to villages and primary healthcare areas outside the cities,” he said.

Both experts called for increased local research, sustainable funding, affordable technology and continuous professional development to expand access to rehabilitation services across the country.