Medical Initiative
The African dilemma is often described as: People are poor because of poor health or they have poor health because they are poor. The new 'Football for Health' initiative of the FIFA Medical Research and Assessment Centre could become a milestone of the "Win in Africa with Africa" initiative offering the most precious win to every football player and fan on the continent: health.
Health is our most precious possession and the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being. Nevertheless, in some countries of the world, the average life expectancy is over 80 years, while in others, such as Africa, South America, Oceania and Asia, the life expectancy is sometimes below 40 years with every second person dying as a child. Dealing with this discrepancy is not an easy task.
One fact is well known for sure - there is not enough money now or in the future to cover the health care costs not only in the emerging countries but also in the highly developed countries. This fact is well known to doctors, governments and health care organizations and a solution is urgently searched for. There is undoubtedly no magic remedy. But there is one passion shared by billions of people that offers immense possibilities just waiting to be explored. This passion is football.
Medicine for Football
In the past 14 years, the FIFA Medical Assessment and Research Centre (F-MARC) has invested in research to improve the game, to understand the cause of injuries and to develop their preventive programme 'The 11'. Applied appropriately, this programme could significantly reduce treatment costs for injuries caused by playing football. Considering the 250 million football players worldwide, this would mean billions of potential savings.
Doctors play a key role in this undertaking. The "winning part" of the game is not their prime objective, doctors aim at maintaining and improving health and preventing injury and disease.
F-MARC want to promote football as a health enhancing leisure activity for everyone. And F-MARC want to use it as an universal education tool to meet the challenge outlined above.
Health by playing
Physical exercise cannot only improve the well-being and the physical fitness, but can in fact be prescribed as a therapeutic modality to prevent and treat the major threats of our modern life style; such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension and diseases of the heart and vessels. Why not take this chance and prescribe 45 or 60 minutes of football, the one universal game, three times a week to tackle these diseases?
And why not tap the full potential of this unique tool to spread simple but effective messages on how to protect oneself from the most devastating infectious diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis and malaria? Because these 'big three' are responsible for about three million deaths in Africa every year, the FIFA World Cup 2010 South Africa will be an invaluable opportunity to reach those most heavily threatened by them.
Set the ball rolling
To realise FOOTBALL FOR HEALTH, F-MARC aims at developing a similar 'The 11' programme for the prevention of diseases, as it has so successfully done for the prevention of injuries. In close cooperation with African doctors and organisations such as AMREF (African Medical & research Foundation), this could become a milestone of the "Win in Africa with Africa" initiative offering the most precious win to every football player and fan on the continent: health.
source: fifa.com
