The National Association of Manufacturers and Importers of Hearing Aids (ANFIA) has presented in the Congress of Deputies the first White Paper on Hearing Health in Spain. With this document, the Association wants to take a decisive step to place hearing at the center of the health, social, and institutional debate.
The event, celebrated on World Health Day, brought together experts, association representatives, professionals and public officials around the idea that caring for hearing is also caring for quality of life, inclusion and brain health.
The inauguration was carried out by Rafael Belmonte, second secretary of the Health Commission of the Congress of Deputies, while the closing was performed by Doctor María Sainz, deputy and first secretary of the Health Commission of the Congress of Deputies.
The White Paper on Auditory Health, is a tool for dissemination, awareness, and proposal aimed at organizing knowledge, gathering evidence, and contributing to greater awareness about hearing loss and its consequences. Its author is Dr. Santiago Cervera, director of PI Salud at Political Intelligence, who stressed that untreated hearing loss constitutes a silent form of exclusion that affects employment, education, personal autonomy, and people's well-being.
Some of the major axes included in the White Paper are the need to advance in prevention, early detection and auditory rehabilitation, as well as the relationship between hearing loss and cognitive decline.
In this regard, Dr. Estela Lladó-Carbó, a doctor in Neurosciences, explained that poor hearing forces the brain to dedicate more effort to interpreting sounds, reducing resources for other functions such as memory or attention. Furthermore, she recalled that it is a modifiable risk factor in the prevention of neurodegenerative diseases.
Invisibilized reality
The event also put the focus on the social dimension of a disability still insufficiently visible. Francesc Carreño, president of the National Association of Audioprosthetists (ANA), warned that many people with hearing loss still do not receive the help they need.
For her part, María del Carmen Sacacia, president of the Spanish Confederation of Families of Deaf People in Spain FIAPAS, warned of the social isolation that can result from deafness. José Luis Blanco, president of the Spanish Association of Audiology (AEDA), insisted on the need to reinforce early detection also in adults and the elderly. The day also included the testimony of a young patient with hearing loss, in one of the most emotional moments of the meeting.
At the institutional opening, Sandra Salobral, president of ANFIA, emphasized the work developed to complete this publication and highlighted the importance of continuing to build social and institutional awareness around auditory health. Along the same lines, ANFIA's vice president, José Luis Otero, summarized the human impact of auditory rehabilitation by recalling that recovering hearing is also recovering voice, security, and dignity.
The day concluded with the intervention of ANFIA's manager, Juan Menéndez- Tolosa, who conveyed the Association's request that auditory health become part of the legislator's debate, in view of the sanitary, social, and preventive importance of this issue.
With this, ANFIA wanted to emphasize that the presentation of the White Paper in Congress does not represent only an editorial and institutional milestone, but also an invitation to open a more ambitious public conversation about one of the great health challenges of our time.