On May 11 and 12 the First Workshop on Exchange of Knowledge and Experiences in Intercultural Detection and Response to Children under 5 Years Old with Hearing Loss was held in the city of Matamoros Tlacolula. Nicole Kast led CORAL in organizing the workshop in collaboration with the Intercultural Development Unit and Traditional Medicine Health Services Oaxaca, the State Council of Traditional Indigenous Doctors Oaxaca, Adolescent Development and Child Welfare and the Tlacolula de Matamoros Special Education School.

This workshop brought together traditional healers, midwives, therapists and allopathic physicians to openly discuss ways of conceptualizing hearing loss, with particular emphasis in the areas of prevention, early detection and diagnosis, and rehabilitation and/or treatment. CORAL conceived the workshop as a first attempt at collaboration with both the Secretary of Health and its programs supporting people with hearing loss, and with traditional practitioners who play an important role in rural communities of Oaxaca.

Creating an intercultural model for dealing with deafness is not easy; however, in a state with 16 officially recognized indigenous cultures, it is necessary to consider the different views of health, illness and disability as indispensable tools for treating this problem.

We hope to have more meetings of this kind in the near future and for the relationships built between different sectors to continue developing. We aim to work together to build an alternative model for prevention, detection, diagnosis and rehabilitation of hearing loss, taking into account the culture and customs of the individual with hearing loss and their families and communities.