 Welcome to Geneva for the WISIS Forum 2019. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the event and accessibility is a big theme this year to discuss it. I am joined by Shelly Shadda. She's medical officer for the prevention of deafness and hearing loss at the World Health Organization. Shelly, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you, Shadda. So, Shelly, you were here at WISIS Forum to discuss this initiative. You've launched a few years back and it's about reducing the risk of hearing loss. What can you tell us about it? So, in 2015, WHO estimated that over a billion young people are at risk of hearing loss simply because of the way they're listening to music, both through their personal devices, through their smartphones, over their smartphones, but also in entertainment venues and discos and bars, concerts and so on. So, to address this growing risk in a fairly young population, WHO launched the Make Listening Safe initiative and over the past, well, over three years now, we have been working with ITU in order to address this issue of how can we reduce the risk of hearing loss, which is being posed by unsafe use of devices. So, in terms of your work with ITU, you're trying to develop a global standard for safe listening, aren't you? Can you tell us a bit more about that? So, we have already developed and launched this global standard and this standard is essentially about reducing or preventing hearing loss due to listening to loud music for a long time. Maybe you travel on the bus and you see people with their ears plugged in and you can hear the music even without plugging it into your ears. So, it's to reduce that and in order to do so, this standard essentially talks about three things. It talks about giving people a way to monitor how much they're listening. Think of it somewhat like a speedometer. So, a speedometer in your device which tells you how fast you're going, so how much of your sound, how much of the sound you're getting is what it can monitor and display. And the second feature is, well, think of it like a safety belt, that when you reach your maximum level, it can automatically reduce the volume to a level which would be safe for one to listen to. And lastly is also to provide information. So, thirdly is to give users that information of how much they should be listening to and for how long. Technology is a double-edged sword, isn't it? Because you are telling us that it's responsible for deterioration of hearing conditions basically within the young population in particular. But ICT can also be used to remedy content. So, can you share some examples with us? For sure. And I would say it's not really the ICTs themselves which are responsible for hearing loss in this case, but rather it's the unsafe use of ICTs. And I completely agree with you. The rationale for developing the standard is that ICTs which are currently part of the challenge should become part of the solution. We know that technology is being used. There is digital health, mobile health initiatives. It's being used to raise awareness amongst people about different health issues. So, in this case, in this standard, we use it to raise awareness about hearing loss prevention, about how people can change their listening style, their listening behavior in order to protect their ears. So, in this case, we want to use ICTs as a tool for prevention through raised awareness and also through providing people with certain information and also certain safe listening options. But ICT can also be used to identify hearing loss early. Just recently, we launched from WHO an app called the Hear WHO. So, this is an app which can be downloaded on any device, any phone or other device, and it can be used to check your hearing. So, sitting in your house or in your office over a period of three minutes, you can get a sense of, okay, I'm fine, I'm doing well, or I need to take some action and go and get my hearing checked. And then, ICTs are also now, you may have heard that there are various proposals and options now to also use ICT for people who have hearing loss, and they can use it well to amplify sound through the device and also customize it to their hearing levels. And lastly, ICT can also be used in order to provide access to well technology and information through, for example, voice to text kind of applications or software which is there. So, for sure, ICT has opened a whole world of possibilities for us, right, from prevention up to providing access to information through voice to text technology and so on. And finally, Shelley, as a professional working for one of the largest UN agencies, what can you tell us about WISIS Forum as a platform to spread your message? So, we see the WISIS as a unique opportunity for WHO to come in touch with a sector that otherwise is not so accessible to us. It is the ministries of technologies and member state representatives who do not normally come in contact with WHO's messages. So, we have here a unique opportunity to spread our health-related messages to this sector, because of course health is, as WHO says, everybody's business. Okay, Shelley, thank you very much. Thank you. It was a pleasure to speak with you. Shelley Shadda, Medical Officer at the World Health Organization. Thank you.