Statistics

Guatemala currently has approximately 15, 073.375 inhabitants, distributed as follows: Urban 42.8% and Rural 57.2% (Data provided by the National Statistics Institute INE 2012).

Each year approximately 365,000 babies are born, by reference to the annual growth rate of population which is 2.4%, one of the highest in Latin America (World Survey Program Progress Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, ICPD)

This means that about 1,000 babies are born every day; based on international statistics, between 1 and 3 babies are born every day who will require special education, hearing aids and/or cochlear implants.

To this figure, we add children who lose their hearing due to other causes such as meningitis, recurrent otitis, trauma, mumps, ototoxic drugs, etc.

This information applies to children only. However, it is important to mention that the adult population with hearing loss is much larger because, in addition to accumulating all children who grow with hearing loss, consider hearing losses that occur in the adult population due to ototoxicity, trauma, among others. In addition, the prevalence increases significantly with age.

Data from the World Health Organization, (WHO, 2013) indicate that 360 million people suffer from hearing impairment; this is equivalent to 5% of the world population. Of these, 165 million are people over 65 years, equivalent to 45.8%; this means that one in three people over 65 suffer some form of hearing impairment. In Latin America, the prevalence was found to be of 38.6%.