The Ear Trust, which was founded by consultant Chris Raine back in 1990 to support the work of the Yorkshire Cochlear Implant Centre, has worked hard to raise £1million to enable it to develop plans for a new centre.

However, the project will cost a total of £2.5million in total, so through the Listening for Life Appeal we are asking the people of Bradford to get behind the campaign to bring this fantastic new facility to the city.

The cochlear implant service is housed in Bradford Royal Infirmary and is transforming lives by restoring the hearing of hundreds of profoundly deaf babies, children and adults.

The results are life-transforming and enable users to become active participants in the hearing world they live in. The majority of children can attend mainstream schools and adults can leave behind their world of isolation.

The service performs about ten per cent of all implant operations in England but, with this success and increasing referrals from across Yorkshire, it is now bursting at the seams.

As Mr Raine says: "We can't exist much longer in the shoe box we have now."

What is needed is a purpose-built centre, housing everything under one roof, and Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has agreed that the centre can be built in the grounds of BRI.

Detailed plans have already been submitted and permission to start building has been granted - all that is needed now is more cash. If the appeal is successful it is hoped the centre could be completed by 2009.

Mr Raine said the Listening for Life Centre, as it will be known, will be an eco-friendly building which will be available for patients, families and professionals throughout Yorkshire and beyond.

It will be a ground-breaking building, in that apart from the cochlear implant operations themselves, all the other related work, such as pre-testing and follow-up support, will take place under one roof. This is a first for the UK.

There will be plenty of space in the building for staff and patients. There will also be a training suite to provide courses for professionals, people with implants and parents and family members.

It is hoped the centre will offer a friendly environment where staff will be able to diagnose and support profoundly deaf babies, children and adults.

It will have sophisticated testing and assessment rooms. Importantly for newly-diagnosed patients and their families it will have space where they can meet and talk to those who have already been fitted with implants.

The centre will also need a range of equipment needed to assess patients and support them after implants through speech therapy and rehabilitation, to learn how to use the implants.

"Sadly deafness is an unseen disease," said Mr Raine. "It will affect us all at some stage. We hope that you may be able to support us in some way.

"We will go on to build upon our success for assessing and treating adults and babies throughout Yorkshire and beyond."