The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Family fight for £60,000 treatment
A DUNDEE FAMILY battling to give their profoundly deaf son a better life are trying to raise £ 60,000 to send him to Italy for a bionic hearing device to be fitted inside his skull.
The procedure is available from the National Health Service at a unit in Manchester, which yesterday defended its record in performing the highly specialised operation.
The Bosch family, from Charleston, insist they are not ungrateful for the help that little Oliver is receiving from the NHS and charities in the UK.
They simply believe that having worldleading specialist surgeon ProfessorVittorio Colletti fit an auditory brainstem implant to help Oliver hear is the best option available.
Oliver, whose first birthday is at the end of this month, was born without auditory nerves meaning he cannot benefit from conventional hearing aids or cochlear implants.
He has other medical issues and is undergoing tests to see if he has the rare Goldenhar syndrome, where sufferers have no hearing, facial or balance nerves.
This would confine him to a life trapped in his own world, unable to communicate.
After his plight was highlighted by The Courier this month, the family was offered sign language courses by the National Deaf Children’s Society, which would allow Oliver a level of communication with his parents and grandparents.
The offer was gratefully accepted but his family have stressed that this help would not give Oliver the fuller life they crave for him.
“We are taking up the offer but this would only allow Oliver to communicate with people who use sign language,” mother Jemma said.
“He would struggle to make himself understood by people who don’t use sign language, he would have to go to a special school and would face an uncertain future beyond that – would he be able to find a job, for example?
“A successful brainstem implant operation would overcome these problems. He would have synthesised hearing of a pretty good level and would also learn to speak.
“We feel this would give him a much more normal life. He would be able to go to a mainstream school with support and would have a much fuller adult life beyond that stage.”
The implant operation is available with the NHS at a specialist unit in Manchester, and Oliver has been referred there by NHS Tayside whose support they have valued.
Jemma does not want him to have the operation, pioneered by Professor Colletti, in Manchester but wants instead to send him to the expert’s own clinic in Italy, which she feels has a better record.
The £60,000 cost may seem daunting, but Jemma said the price should be seen in the context of the thousands of pounds that routine cochlear implant operations cost the NHS for each patient.
Oliver’s dad Ben, a keen fly-fisherman, has organised a fundraising event at Ledyatt Loch, north of Dundee, later this summer.