Prem Victor

Dr. Prem Victor, an ear, nose, and throat surgeon, has passed away. During his life, he pioneered an early intervention, comprehensive care program for deaf children and their parents. He extended his program to other parts of Asia and Africa, as well as to deaf children with other disabilities.

As a surgeon, Prem quickly realized the value of early diagnosis for deaf children. However, he felt the simple diagnosis and medical care required by his profession were doing little to help parents encourage and stimulate the development of their children. This inspired him to align himself with educators in order to form the first comprehensive medical and educational intervention program for deaf children, which he conducts out of his own home.

Prem's center provides early medical diagnosis for deaf children. The short- term objectives of the center are to improve diagnostic capabilities within a community. This will foster the long-term education of the children as well as the parents. Parents are taught by other parents of deaf children how to best facilitate their children's learning and development. These sessions also serve as support groups where parents can learn from one another's experiences.

Children receive specialized preschool and kindergarten education designed to prepare them for mainstream public school education. This early intervention program offers a chance for over eighty percent of the deaf children to join ordinary schools and potentially continue on to the university. Prem's Delhi-based model is spreading quickly to various parts of India.With Prem's pushing, the program has spread to Bangladesh, Kenya, and Jordan. With increasing requests for replication assistance now coming in from other countries, Prem has helped found Initiatives on the Education of the Deaf in the Third World, a citizen organization based in London. He is also spreading his model to serve deaf children with other disabilities, especially multiple sclerosis.

India is able to provide services through special schools to only one percent of the deaf children in the country. Lack of early diagnosis, community awareness about follow-up to diagnosis, and the compartmentalization of parental, medical, and educational efforts to tackle the problem have stood in the way of practical solutions. Frustrated by the complexity and expense of having to coordinate the different professional groups involved in the mainstreaming process, parents often give up. Rural areas and small towns particularly need help.

Once a child has been diagnosed as deaf, there are few options for his or her continuing education. There is no cooperation between the medical technicians, who provide hearing aids and diagnosis, and the educators, who prepare deaf children with the language and perception skills that enable them to enter existing educational facilities.

Prem's medical colleagues provide early diagnosis, determine hearing capability, provide appropriate amplification aids, and follow up treatment. Special educators, trained at Prem's teachers, training school, work with these medical specialists and the parents to develop the communication and learning skills of the deaf students in order to prepare them for primary education in mainstream schools. Prem involves parents in every level of the program. They raise seventy-five percent of Prem's foundation's annual budget through direct solicitations and greeting card sales, as well as manage the foundation's activities.

Feeling that they have matured into a strong, able group, Prem has recently stepped down as president to allow others to run the program completely. This is allowing Prem the time to concentrate on spreading his program within India and worldwide. He receives a growing number of invitations from across India and increasingly from other countries, requesting his assistance in establishing comprehensive care programs for deaf and multiple-handicapped children.

During his postgraduate studies in medicine in Chandigarh, Prem became absorbed with the problems of the hearing impaired. Though many of his colleagues criticized his internship emphasis on hearing impairment diagnosis as impractical, he persisted in his chosen field. Giving up a financially lucrative surgical practice, he began his education program for the deaf with his own small savings and collateral. The support of his wife, a librarian, and his young son has been crucial to Prem's ability to pursue his dream of comprehensive care for deaf children.