Please help Jasmine to hear

Jasmine starts school in March but struggles in noisy environments and when she can't see the person talking. She lipreads and follows instructions by copying what others are doing. Her speech has been delayed and she has gaps in her vocabulary. She becomes easily frustrated by the sheer exhaustion of straining to hear all day long and racing to keep up.

She is nevertheless a cheerful and bright girl, who we are determined will reach her potential.

The Government used to fund only one ear when both ears were profoundly deaf and has recently moved to fund both; however for a child with one profoundly deaf ear it funds none. The research, however, shows how poorly children with single-sided deafness (SSD) fare academically and socially.

Jasmine wears an FM system which allows a teacher wearing a microphone to talk directly into her good ear. But this means she misses out on conversations with her friends. A cochlear implant is the only treatment to truly restore binaural hearing.

I feel that just as an amputee would be given a prosthetic leg, or someone with blindness in one eye would be cured if such a cure was available, Jasmine should be given the chance of two functioning ears.

As her parents, we are convinced of the importance of this surgery and the possibilities it will bring her in hearing sound for the first time in her right ear. That gift will bring her the ability to work out where sound is coming from, hear sound and music in both ears and help her to discern speech in noise. Thank you for reading.