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How Ebola Outbreak Could Affect Africanfootball - Sports - Nairaland

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How Ebola Outbreak Could Affect Africanfootball by clemmonce(m): 9:18pm On Aug 08, 2014
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. courtesy Goal.com.
Re: How Ebola Outbreak Could Affect Africanfootball by bbello28(m): 9:27pm On Aug 08, 2014
Eleyi gidi gan O cry
Re: How Ebola Outbreak Could Affect Africanfootball by clemmonce(m): 9:30pm On Aug 08, 2014
bbello28: Eleyi gidi gan O cry
it is not funny at all. There is a possibility that the African cup will be cancelled.

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