10 thousand 536 people benefited from the Barrier-Free Health Communication Center (ESİM), the Ministry of Health's service for hearing and speech impaired people. Minister of Health Fahrettin Koca stated on his social media account that the number of people aware of the Ministry's ESİM service is low and said: "ESİM minimizes the disadvantage of hearing and speech impairment in the process of applying to healthcare services, especially the emergency ones, and receiving healthcare services. For example, a patient, whose spouse is also hearing impaired like themselves, called an ambulance at 3 a.m. thanks to ESİM, and received information about their spouse from the specially trained staff via remote access. "Not Known Enough" Pointing out that ESİM is not well known among those who can benefit from it, Koca stated: "Last year, 10 thousand 536 people benefited from this service. However, approximately 900 thousand people in our country are not able to hear at all. People with low hearing or speech impairment can also be included in that number. The ESİM Project is implemented to overcome the difficulties hearing and speech impaired people face such as not being able to reach 112 especially in case of an urgent health problem or communicate with the doctor while being examined at the hospital. It is now aimed to be disseminated. We are in the International Week of the Deaf on September 18-24. Let's see this week as an opportunity to introduce the ESIM service."
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