Dear Editor,
My profound sympathy to the parents, other relatives, friends and members of the basketball community on the sudden passing of Kevin Worrell (SN October 6, 2008).
From the reports read, Kevin was an example of discipline which I hope has filtered down, not only through the basketball community, but among athletes of every sport discipline.
What does not necessarily apply to the late Kevin Worrell but applies to the average sportsman/woman in Guyana is that he/she has to work very hard for meagre wages to sustain him/herself (and family) and still find time to practise the sport that he/she loves and even harder, come competition time.
Some sportspersons can rarely afford the correct nutritional requirements together with the necessary supplements to balance their diets and enhance their performances.
As a matter of interest, how many sportspersons have regular medical examinations?
Many a person, sports or otherwise, may appear physically fit, externally but is there knowledge of any heredity illnesses? Etc?
Many attempts were made in the past to have a functioning Sports Medicine Association in Guyana that would have benefitted sportsmen and women. However, for reasons beyond my imagination, this never became a reality.
The following is an extract from Wikipedia.org:
Sports medicine specializes in preventing, diagnosing and treating injuries related to participating in sports and/or exercise, specifically the rotation or deformation of joints or muscles caused by engaging in such physical activities.
The sports medicine “team” includes specialty physicians and surgeons, athletic trainers, physical therapists, coaches, other personnel, as well as the athlete himself/herself. Because of the competitive nature of sports, a primary focus of sports medicine is the rapid recovery of patients, which drives many innovations in the field.
Sports medicine has always been difficult to define because it is not a single specialty, but an area that involves health care professionals, researchers and educators from a wide variety of disciplines. Its function is not only curative and rehabilitative, but especially preventive.
Despite this wide scope, there has been a tendency for many to assume that sport-related problems are by default musculoskeletal and that sports medicine is an orthopaedic specialty.
There is much more to sports medicine than just musculoskeletal diagnosis and treatment. Illness or injury in sport can be caused by many factors – from environmental to physiological and psychological.
Consequently, sports medicine can encompass an array of specialties, including cardiology, pulmonology, rehabilitation medicine, orthopaedic surgery, nutrition, dentistry, ophthalmology, exercise physiology, biomechanics, and traumatology.
Yours faithfully,
Stephen Michael Monasingh
Founder Member/ Secretary:
Guyana Sports Medicine Association
(Sanctioned by the Guyana Olympic Association in 1995)
(Comment taken from Stabroek News website)
