More than three million babies have now been screened under the NHS Newborn Hearing Screening Programme, which aims to identify moderate, severe and profound deafness in babies.
Since its introduction in March 2006, the programme has identified some 4,500 babies in England with confirmed deafness in one or both ears. Before then, more than half of children with a permanent deafness were not recognised until they were 18 months old, and at least a quarter were not identified by three and a half years of age.
Some 840 children are born each year in the UK with a hearing loss in both ears - 90 per cent of them into families with no experience, or history, of childhood hearing loss.
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