Vanuatu

In 1989, David Pither and his family travelled to Vanuatu as part of an outreach trip by their church. At the time, David was asked to take anything he could in the way of hearing aids. During his stay he discovered that Vanuatu, like most of the surrounding pacific islands at the time had no hearing testing services, clinics or hearing aids available for the deaf and hearing impaired.

In response to this, David embarked on a personally funded campaign to set up a hearing clinic at the Vila Central Hospital and train 'nurses' in hearing assessment and hearing aid fitting, including the manufacture of custom ear moulds. This comprised of about seven trips to Vanuatu over five years and included the sponsoring of two trainees who spent several months in Australia. The project culminated in 1994 with the running of a three week ENT nursing course at the hospital for 14 participants.

David's experience in Vanuatu taught him many lessons in dealing with the development of hearing services in developing countries. The important lessons he learnt in training personnel and dealing with bureaucracies have been transferred to many other projects since.