 Hello everyone, every year on 3rd of March we observe World Hearing Day. So for this year the WHO theme is to hear for life, listen with care. So what is the key message? It is possible to retain good hearing throughout our life if we take care of our ear. Because most common causes of hearing loss are preventable including the hearing loss due to exposure to loud sounds. So safe listening can mitigate the risk of hearing loss which is due to occupational exposure or due to recreational sound exposure. So we are talking about noise induced hearing loss which is caused by occupational hazards like in mechanics or heavy machinery drivers and in factories. Or it is due to recreational activities like that is called social excuses due to spending lot of time in video arcades, bike racing, car racing, rock music which can all harm the ears. Actually there is a law which states that a person can be exposed maximum up to 90 decibel for 8 hours per day maximum 5 days in a week. This is something that should be followed especially in the factories. So what is the target group? So this is the policy makers, the factory owners, the venue owners for the event management. Also the general public including the young adults who should be listening to this and trying to follow this. If someone develops a noise induced hearing loss how do they present to us? So it is basically not causing much of a problem in the initial stage because this affects the high frequency and our normal conversation is in low frequency. So the person is able to manage all his routine activities without much trouble. What brings them to us is usually when they start developing buzzing sound in the ear that is called tinnitus or they feel some kind of block in the ear as if there is cotton in the ear. And during examination also we find everything normal including the tuning fork test. That is why when there is a high element of doubt it is ideal to do pure tone audiometry which will pick a particular dip at 4 kHz in the initial stage. Whereas in later on other frequencies also will be involved and the hearing loss will progress. So in high risk group it is mandatory that they undergo annual pure tone audiometry. So how to prevent this? So there are three ways in which we prevent noise induced hearing loss. One is to improve the technology so the noise is reduced at the source. Second you can create barrier around the noise that is by using sound protection or sound proofing. Third is to use ear muffs or protective devices, ear plugs wherein the working personnel can reduce the noise by further 20-30 days. So it is important to spread the awareness among the high risk individuals and make sure their employers make the serial audiogram annually mandatory and they follow all the legislations and social excuses also is something that we should spread awareness about in the young adults and try and prevent it. Unfortunately if someone has developed noise induced hearing loss is there any treatment that we can give? It is possible to provide them with hearing aid unfortunately they do not tolerate it well. As we hear in medicine prevention is better than cure but when it comes to noise induced hearing loss we say there is only prevention and there is no cure. That is why we say voice ears last for a lifetime. So on this world hearing day I would like to insist to hear for life listen with care. Thank you.