After several months of planning and construction work, the new behavioral testing room that last summer’s Montanathon helped to finance is now complete — and its wonderful!
The local contractor did a fabulous job with not only the construction of the test booth, but also the rest of the room. He built furniture and cabinets and donated them to the project. The window was replaced and the room painted with fresh paint. This room was previously storage space so the transformation is stunning.
Yesterday, we installed speakers and VRA (visual reinforcement audiometry). When a sound is presented from the audiometer in free field testing (no headphones), it comes through the speakers. When a child responds to the sound and looks over at its source, the tv screens on the wall flash an image to reinforce to the child that he or she heard something. By conditioning the child to look over at the VRA screens, an audiologist can accurately test what a young child is actually hearing.
This is an exciting day for the National Center for Maternal and Child Health, the largest pediatric hospital in Mongolia. They now are able to offer a gold standard of care in pediatric audiology that was previously lacking. The Global Foundation team of audiologists will provide training to the Mongolians on how to effectively utilize VRA and conditioned play audiometry to evaluate the children.
