Blessing is 3 years old and profoundly deaf. His only chance of learning to talk will be if he gets a cochlear implant soon. Without the implant, he will not be able to attend a local mainstream school. He will need to attend a boarding school for the deaf which is 100km away, and will not be granted an equal opportunity to develop communication skills which (as an adult) will provide him with the same job opportunities as his normal-hearing peers.
Hearing aids often do not provide enough sound for children with profound hearing loss to develop spoken language skills. With his hearing aids, Blessing can only hear low-sounding speech sounds, like "m", "b" or "a", and no high-sounding speech sounds. He is thus able to say "mama" at this stage, but will most certainly not develop adequate spoken language with his current hearing aids. He needs a different kind of amplification device, for him to learn to talk.
A cochlear implant is Blessing's only hope to learn to talk. Cochlear implants provide children like Blessing with access to most or all speech sounds, enabling their brains to process speech and for them to learn to talk.
A cochlear implant will help Blessing to live an independent life, as he will be able to integrate into the hearing world. It will improve his and his family's quality of life considerably, as he will be able to communicate freely with all members of his family, and his chances of getting and keeping a job as an adult will be greatly increased.
