Princess Lalla Asmae and Ivory Coast’s First Lady, Dominique Ouattara, inaugurated the neonatal deafness screening program and the Lalla Asmae Foundation’s Hearing Loss Diagnostic and Rehabilitation Centre in Rabat on Wednesday.
The program will offer early diagnosis of hearing loss in newborns, cochlear implants to restore hearing and speech therapy, as well as expertise sharing between Moroccan doctors and African ones.
Princess Lalla Asmae and Ouattara visited African children who had undergone surgery the day before, before attending a speech therapy session and another on dissection given to African Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT) doctors.
Regarding the Lalla Asmae Foundation Hearing Loss Diagnostic and Rehabilitation Centre, the center encompasses the reception room, the mother and child area, the pediatric consultation room, the ENT consultation room, the speech therapy room, the occupational therapy-psychology room, the infirmary, the audiometry room, and the auditory evoked potentials room.
The Princess and the First Lady attended a presentation on the “White Ear,” designed to make the hearing impaired more visible, before proceeding to bestow pins upon two deaf girls.
During this visit, the two parties presided over the signing ceremony of three agreements between the Lalla Asmae Foundation, Royal Air Maroc, Bank of Africa, and the Mohammed VI Foundation for Science and Health.
The director of the Lalla Asmae Foundation, El Abbes Bouhlal, and the CEO of Royal Air Maroc (RAM), Abdelhamid Addou, signed the first agreement. Bouhlal and the CEO of Bank of Africa Group, Amine Bouabid, signed the second agreement, while Bouhlal and the deputy director of the Mohammed VI Foundation for Science and Health, Younes Bjijou, signed the third agreement.
Several officials greeted Princess Lalla Asmae and the First Lady Ouattara.