Learn The Signs For Deaf Coronavirus Patients

Health workers study sign language to care for Deaf COVID-19 patients.

WUHAN, Xinhua, China -- What happens when Leishenshan Hospital in Wuhan greets two Deaf Coronavirus (COVID-19) patients? Health workers study sign language during their spare time to provide better care for Deaf couple.

Mr Yu and Ms Zhao are two Deaf patients infected with COVID-19. They were sent to Leishenshan Hospital in Wuhan on Feb. 18. In order to take care of them, health workers at the hospital study sign language during their spare time which enables them to communicate with the two patients. Both the patients receive proper treatment and are in stable condition now.

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Get The Facts on Coronavirus:

Information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak is spreading fast, but what do we actually know about the illness? Here's explained with captions.

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CBC News medical contributor and family physician Dr. Peter Lin breaks down the facts about what it is, where it came from, how it spreads and what you can do to protect yourself. What we know (and don't know) about the new coronavirus outbreak... Read The Full Story on CBC News.

Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak.

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Deaf Woman Fights Miami Hospital For Terp

Deaf News: Deaf woman fights Miami Hospital for interpreter in Florida.

MIAMI, FL -- Next week, next month or maybe next year -- she does not know exactly when -- Cheylla Silva will need to visit her local hospital again. And when that happens, Silva, who is Deaf, doesn't want to struggle just to communicate with doctors and nurses as she has the last two dozen times.

Silva communicates in American Sign Language, and she says she has labored to convey and comprehend the most basic information at Baptist Hospital Miami because the hospital has refused to provide an interpreter.

Instead, she has been directed to a Video Remote Interpreting system or VRI for communication. But the remote video service crashes, the feed can be choppy and it's hard to see when she's lying in a hospital bed with tubes in her arms or when a medical team has crowded into her room.

"Why does everything have to be a struggle?" Silva, 34, asked through an interpreter. "I just want to be able to communicate like anybody else."

On Wednesday, Silva was in federal court in Miami to argue that Baptist Hospital's refusal to provide a live interpreter violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. She filed the case against Baptist in 2014 along with John Paul Jebian, a Miami man who also is Deaf. A U.S. District Court judge dismissed the case a year later but Silva and Jebian are appealing.

The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division also weighed in on the case, filing a brief in support of Silva and Jebian's claims, and urging the federal appeals court to reverse the dismissal by U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams.

The appeal centers on whether the remote video service -- which allows an interpreter to translate via video screen -- provides equal access and effective communication for a deaf patient as required by the ADA, said Matthew Dietz, an attorney with the Disability Independence Group, a nonprofit advocate for the disabled representing Silva and Jebian.

Dietz argued that system may work in some hospital settings, such as one-on-one meeting with a nurse or doctor, but it is ineffective and inadequate in others, such as during an MRI or X-ray, or during child birth or group therapy sessions.

He said Baptist's refusal to dedicate a high-speed, wide bandwidth Internet connection for the service also means blurry and choppy images, and repeated disconnections.

Deaf patients, Dietz said, "deserve to know what's happening to them."

SOURCE - EMSWorld

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Deaf and Dying at the Ottawa Hospital

Deaf and dying: How a volunteer team brings palliative care comfort through communication in the capital of Canada.

OTTAWA -- The first experience Monica Elaine Campbell had with palliative care was helping a woman who had lost her ability to speak because of throat cancer.

Campbell, profoundly Deaf since birth, is an excellent lip reader and staff at an Ottawa Hospital asked if she could interpret the dying woman’s words. The woman had been communicating with paper and pen, but now was too weak even to do that.

“I was very hesitant. Then I thought, well, the least I could do is give it a try,” said Campbell, who is able to speak despite never having heard a word herself. “I put my hand on her right arm and said, ‘I’ve never done this before. I will try my best.”

WATCH: Video with CC - Ottawa Citizen.

Campbell leaned close as the woman mouthed her words. Campbell repeated it back and had the woman nod yes if she had understood correctly. She spent five hours with the woman, relaying messages between her and her family and the medical team. She was able to interpret about 85 per cent of what the woman told her.

“I came away a different person,” Campbell said. “I was very touched by the experience.”

The dying woman had not been Deaf, but the experience got Campbell thinking about the communication needs of people like herself: the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. A few years later, Campbell was asked to help a Deaf friend who was about to receive bad news about her cancer diagnosis.

“I didn’t know much about palliative care, but she was struggling with her terminal illness,” Campbell said. “I thought, my goodness, what if that was me? I thought, I should talk to my Deaf friends about death and dying and what our experiences have been.”

Those conversations led Campbell and her friend, sign language interpreter Christine Wilson, to start up the Ottawa Deaf Palliative Care Team, a group of volunteers that provide end-of-life care for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and their families. In 1999, she enrolled in palliative care courses at Algonquin College with two Deaf colleagues (the Deaf use a capital D to refer to the sub-culture of people who communicate with sign language; “Hard of Hearing” are those who have lost some or most of the hearing but can still use some speech, sometimes augmented with sign language; the “Deafened” or “Oral Deaf” have lost some or all of their hearing, but either learned to speak before their deafness or, like Campbell, learned to speak despite it... Read More at Ottawa Citizen.

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Deaf Woman Sues New Hampshire Hospital

New Hampshire Hospital has agreed to a settlement over allegations that it failed to provide appropriate aid and services under the ADA.

PETERBOROUGH, New Hampshire -- The U.S. Department of Justice announced today that Monadnock Community Hospital has agreed to a $5,000 settlement with a Deaf woman who received medical care at the hospital in 2010, according to a statement from justice department officials.

The woman, Amy Dauphinais, communicates primarily through sign language, and alleges hospital officials failed to provide her with auxiliary aids during her stay there, which resulted in her being unable to communicate with hospital personnel, and instead relied on her minor daughter to interpret for her, according to the statement.

Although the hospital agreed to pay Dauphinais $5,000, it did so without admitting liability in the incident, justice department officials said.

In a statement, hospital officials said there was "a strong difference of opinion on the facts of the patient visit that was the basis of the claim," and that "there was never any question of any adverse effect on the quality of care provided to any patient and MCH cooperated throughout the case... Read The Full Story.

Wrong Medications Kill Pregnant Deaf Persons

Wrong medications kill pregnant Deaf persons – GNAD Director.

The Ghana National Association of the Deaf (GNAD) has observed that the inability of doctors and nurses to understand and interpret sign language was leading to wrong prescriptions of medicines to Deaf persons.

The GNAD said the phenomenon was leading to many expectant mothers among Deaf persons losing their lives while others were disheartened and disappointed, given the unfair treatment meted out to Deaf persons visiting health centres across the country.

Mr James M. Sambian, Executive Director of the GNAD, made this known in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on Monday to explain the challenges death persons encounter when accessing healthcare.

He said lack of sign language interpreters was resulting in inappropriate diagnosis because of communication barrier among Deaf patients and the hearing medical officers and the nurses.

Mr Sambian explained that the situation had resulted in the incidence of incorrect prescriptions consequently leading to preventable deaths.

The Executive Director noted that due to lack of understanding and interpretation of sign language, a medical officer in one of the health centres in the Ashanti Region sometime ago, prescribed wrong medicine to a pregnant Deaf woman which consequently killed her.

To break the communication barrier and getting an intermediary, many Deaf persons in most cases had to bear the entire cost of engaging a private sign language interpreter in order to access quality health... Read The Full Story.