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SANIRAJAK/HALL BEACH - A Hall Beach woman recently spent four months in silence while waiting for hearing aid batteries to arrive through the local health centre.

Dinah Pikuyak said she requested replacement batteries in September and was told that the health centre would order them so she wouldn't have to pay for the prescription.

"I've been nagging them since September and they hadn't ordered any," she said. "I can't even hear anything without my hearing aid at all.

"It was kind of frustrating for me."

Fed up with waiting, Pikuyak called family in Iqaluit for help. In the end, her sister was able to find some batteries and mail them to Hall Beach.

Shortly after the package arrived, Pikuyak received a call from the health centre that her batteries had come in.

"This morning they finally gave me a call back," she said last week.

Pikuyak's daughter recently received a hearing aid and her mother was already making preparations to get some replacement batteries through the health centre in anticipation that it would take awhile.

Pam Coulter, spokesperson for Health and Social Services, said she was unsure as to how long the process of ordering the batteries usually takes.

She said batteries are ordered through health centres or local pharmacies after they have been prescribed.

"A prescription is required for hearing aid batteries and can be obtained through the community nurse, audiologist or physician," she said.

Yasmina Pepa, director of communications for Health and Social Services, said the lengthy wait for batteries could be attributed to a number of reasons and explained the process of ordering the prescription.

The health centre "would order it for the client and it would go through purchasing and then we would purchase it and send it over," she said.