Starkey Hearing Foundation India Sets Guinness World Record

Starkey Hearing Foundation set the Guinness World Record with 4,840 patients fit with hearing aids in only eight hours on October 26, 2018 in Pune, India.

The record was set in a large event space in western India. On-site was the team from Starkey India with 170 registered audiologists from all over the country. The event was the biggest hearing mission that Starkey Hearing Foundation had ever accomplished, and the team was quite pleased with the success of the record, which included many children from deaf schools in Pune, India. The flow of each station and the reward of thousands of happy smiles from young children to aging grandparents and everyone in between only added to the special day.

As a global foundation that is based on William F. Austin’s vision of, “So the World May Hear,” Starkey Hearing Foundation created and implemented the scalable WFA^® (Wide Frequency Audibility) Community-based program. This program allows hundreds of patients to be seen in one day with maximum care and quality. Achieving this goal required a large team of trained staff and audiologists from India and around the world. In Pune, India, the Foundation was able to put this program to the test as they made the impossible possible when they broke the Guinness World Record of hearing aids fit in eight hours, with the number capping almost 1,000 more than the previous record held.

One of the proudest accomplishments of the WFA^® model is that each one of the 4,840 patients who were served with better hearing, will also receive personal follow-up care through the AfterCare program, which allows for local teams to be available for any questions or follow-up required for the patients. This allows for a higher success r ate for each patient and a healthier hearing life for them and their families.

Starkey Hearing Foundation India thanks TATA Trust and Yashwantrao Chawhan Pratishthan for their generous donations in support of this worthy cause. Founders, Bill and Tani Austin said, “This is a perfect example of, ‘alone we can’t do much. Together we can change the world.’”

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