How long before a deaf person dies in hospital for want of an interpreter?

[Northerner]

Giving birth to a baby is a beautiful experience, but it is also a scary time too, because of the potential for things to go wrong. So imagine what it feels like to give birth if you are profoundly deaf, and because the hospital hasn't provided you with a sign language interpreter, you are unable to understand what the doctors and nurses around you are saying.

This is what happened to Nadia Hassan at University College Hospital in London just before Christmas. Not only was no interpreter provided during the birth of her son, but there was also very little communication support given during the days afterwards when her baby was receiving medical treatment, which meant she and her husband, Hulusi Bati, didn't know what was going on.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/20/deaf-person-hospital-interpreter-nhs-equality

 

[Copepod]

I'd like to suggest, as a friend of several people who are deaf, and who use a variety of communication methods (BSL, lipreading, combination) that even if an interpretter is not available - and labour and birth do not happen only during normal working hours - staff should be able make themselves easy to lipread (eg not with their backs to a bright window, so that their face is in shade), and hand write notes.

As a Games Maker volunteer at Olyumpics and Paralympics, I was encouraged to learn finger spelling - only 26 letters, after all - but I could already do so, plus had been taught a nickname gesture by a deaf girl in my group on an expedition to South Greenland in 1992. She's now an education officer / link for deaf people in Manchester.

It's not hard to learn the BSL finger spelling alphabet from various internet sites. Be sure to learn BSL (British Sign Language) not American one handed version.