Nearly 2m people will be entitled to get advanced digital hearing aids free on the NHS under a partnership scheme being announced today by the government and Royal National Institute for Deaf People charity.
Alan Milburn, the health secretary, said he would provide £94m to modernise audiology services in England within two years. The Scottish executive made a similar announcement on Wednesday following initiatives in Wales and Northern Ireland.
The RNID had been campaigning for the introduction of digital aids on the grounds that they can give people who are deaf or hard of hearing a 40% improvement in hearing and quality of life.
People were paying up to £2,000 to have them fitted privately, but a bulk deal with the aids' Danish supplier will reduce the cost to the NHS to between £65 and £75 depending on the model.
The digital aids can process sound in ways not possible with the traditional analogue circuit aids that used 1970s technology.
Sound levels can be tailored to suit the individual, background noise can be minimised and the aid can be adjusted by the user to suit different sound environments.
The RNID complained that the analogue aids were so poor that users often left them in bedside drawers, preferring isolation and exclusion from everyday life to the discomfort of feedback, whistling and unacceptable levels of background noise.
Letting the well-off buy digital aids for £2,000 while the poor were provided with the analogue alternative was "the single biggest example of inequality between public and private health provision in the UK", the charity said.
Mr Milburn said 1.8m people would now benefit from the new technology, including 18,000 children. It was already being introduced in 66 trial areas and would be available to everyone who needed it by April 2005.
The RNID has been appointed to manage the programme in the first partnership of its kind between the government and a charity.
John Low, the charity's chief executive, said: "Audiology has for too long been the Cinderella service of the NHS. This announcement means that at last there will be a world class audiology service in England."
Mr Milburn said the digital aids were "the latest example of how investment coupled with reform of how services are delivered can bring real benefits for patients".
