The woman of 108 told to wait 18 months for hearing aid

Government run healthcare at it's best...

A woman aged 108 has been told she must wait 18 months before the Health Service will give her the hearing aid she needs.

Former piano teacher Olive Beal, one of the oldest people in Britain, has poor eyesight and uses a wheelchair. The delay could mean she will be unable to communicate and listen to the music she loves. Now her family have said that realistically Mrs Beal is unlikely ever to receive the digital hearing aid that will save her from isolation.

The one-time suffragette is one of hundreds of thousands of older people made to wait up to two years and sometimes more for modern digital hearing aids that make a dramatic difference to their ability to hear and communicate. The case of Mrs Beal comes just a few days after the Mail revealed how another centenarian, Esme Collins, has been threatened with eviction from the nursing home where she has lived for ten years in a dispute between home owners and the local council over her fees.

She said yesterday: 'I could be dead by then.' Her youngest son was a World War Two soldier killed in Normandy on the day after the D-Day landings. She was widowed 45 years ago. Donna Tipping of the Royal National Institute for the Deaf said: 'I am afraid this is a common problem.

I think that's what the governments counting on Ms. Beal.