Deaf Refugee Girl Sparks Rwanda's Hearing Care Revolution

When Selva Nesar fled Afghanistan with her family in 2021, she had lived her entire five years in complete silence. Today, the deaf refugee child is learning to speak and dreams of becoming a doctor.

Selva arrived in Rwanda as an asylum seeker, born bilaterally deaf with an uncertain future. Her family had escaped the Taliban regime, carrying trauma and hope in equal measure.

In a groundbreaking collaboration, Rwanda's Ministry of Health partnered with the Crocker Catalyst Foundation to bring renowned surgeon Prof. Richard Gurgel from the University of Utah to perform Selva's cochlear implant surgery. But then someone asked a powerful question: why stop at one child?

That question transformed into "Operation Selva." Instead of helping one girl, the initiative expanded to provide cochlear implants to ten deaf children across Rwanda. Parents began calling Prof. Gurgel simply "Muganga," the local word for healer, as their children's worlds opened to sound.

The Ripple Effect spreads far beyond those ten children. Rwanda is now building Africa's first sustainable national cochlear implant program, training local surgeons and audiologists to provide lifelong care. Rwanda Military Hospital has launched newborn hearing screening to catch hearing loss early, when intervention makes the biggest difference.

More than 34 million children worldwide live with disabling hearing loss, most in countries without access to treatment. Without early intervention, deaf children face permanent barriers to education, language development, and economic opportunity.

Rwanda's government made a decisive move by including cochlear implants in its Community-Based Health Insurance program. Medical device manufacturer MED-EL is reinvesting revenues to train Rwandan specialists across every stage of care.

Local surgical teams at King Faisal Hospital and Rwanda Military Hospital are now performing the complex procedures independently. The goal is clear: Rwandan citizens treated by Rwandan doctors, receiving care from Rwandan audiologists for life.

Selva's mother shared that her daughter now dreams of becoming an ENT surgeon herself, perhaps returning one day as a "Muganga" to help other Rwandan children break free from silence. One child's need for healing became a catalyst for transforming an entire nation's approach to hearing healthcare.