Yellowknife, N.W.T. - It has been a busy time for the Hay River medical community with the confirmation of the new Health Centre and now the staff has another new addition.

They have received their brand new portable hearing screener, which was purchased through a $5600 donation from the Elks Lodge back in May.

Public health nurse Francis Aylward had an update on the actual machine and what is next for the staff.

"So we have actually received the screener now and it’s a very compact little machine. We are very excited to have received it and we are going to be trained on the screening machine in September, when our audiologist comes down from Yellowknife."

Aylward described what sort of training they'll be receiving in September.

"It’s just training on how to work the machine itself, we have looked at it and played around with it in the office. It doesn’t look complicated at all, but we want to make sure that we do the screening as properly as possible."

Aylward said the training should be completed after the first week of September, at which point they can begin testing newborn babies in the community.

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