After 4 years of silence, girl gets back hearing

In a rare surgery doctors at a Delhi hospital Monday restored the hearing of a four-year-old Iraqi girl suffering from deafness since birth. The girl was responding to sounds after the surgery.

Doctors at the Apollo Hospitals, where Fatima Ali underwent the surgery, said: "The girl was born without the auditory nerve, the tool of hearing. We have carried out an operation to put an electronic device in her brain to restore hearing sensation."

"It takes at least two months before the brain can respond to the chip and can be switched on," said senior surgeon of the Apollo Hospitals Ameet Kishore, who conducted the surgery. The internal chip's electrodes stimulate the brain to produce sounds.