Health risks in
football have largely
been limited to the relatively rare on-field incidents
involving footballers collapsing [often
to their demise] due to latent cardiac
issues. With the qualification series for the
2015 Africa Cup of Nations gathering
pace, however, a much more realistic
threat looms for the African game:
Ebola. This haemmorhagic fever of viral origin
- indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa and
first diagnosed in 1976 - typically
causes the infected person to
experience debilitating symptoms,
among them fever, muscle pains, headaches, nausea, vomiting and
diarrhea, along with decreased
functioning of the liver and kidneys.
Severe bleeding then occurs, followed
by the inevitable, death. Ebola has long been deemed serious in
Africa, yet never more so than in 2014.
Its latest outbreak - currently ongoing -
first struck in Guinea earlier this year (in
March) and has now claimed as many as
1711 casualties across west Africa, 932 of whom are reported dead. Guinea,
Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria have
all presented cases, while at least two
other countries - namely, Ghana and
Mali - have had suspected cases (later
proven clinically false). Even Morocco, geographically located in
a region generally immune to Ebola, has
had its share. A handful of cases have
also been 'exported' to the Americas
and Saudi Arabia.
How does all of these affect football,
though?

Well, basically, there is the cumulative
effect of rather stringent measures
adopted by some of the affected African
countries. A number have restricted
access - partially or fully - across their
borders, and nations have become increasingly conscious with respect to
travel and immigration, even for short-
lived visits. "You never know who
might be carrying what," these policies
seem to say. Liberia have even gone a step further,
enforcing football-specific regulations,
in a bid to curtail the threat and spread
of Ebola. “Football being a contact sport - people
are sweating - they do contact each
other, and that could result in
contracting the disease," the president
of its football association, Musa Hassan
Bility, told the BBC. "It also has to do with the fans because
whenever there is a game, a lot of
people come together and we want to
discourage gathering at this point," he
said. The association had also told Fifa to
cancel trips to Liberia scheduled for
August and September because "we do
not want the life of the Fifa president
[Sepp Blatter] to be exposed to this
disease.” Not that it would really matter, anyway,
for Liberia have already been eliminated
from the Afcon 2015 qualification
process. Its neighbours, Sierra Leone,
have been unwitting 'beneficiaries' of
the recent Ebola epidemic, however. During an earlier round in the
aforementioned qualification series,
Seychelles refused to allow the Leone
Stars entry into their country to honour
a second-leg fixture on health grounds
(narrowing it down to Ebola), thus forcing the southern African nation to
promptly withdraw and forfeit the tie. Just how more severely the latest Ebola
outbreak would interfere with African
football in subsequent months - starting
with the final round of the Afcon 2015
qualifiers - remains to be seen.
Let's hope it wouldn't prove too
disruptive.

FTC