FIFA Medical Expert Trains NPFL Doctors

         

A member of FIFA medical committee, Professor Efraim Kramer, was in Nigeria for the pre-season medical workshop for Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) club doctors. The training which held at the Media Centre of the Abuja National Stadium yesterday is said to be the very first by any league in the world.

Professor of Emergency Medicine and member of FIFA Medical Committee, Efraim Kramer, said in his opening remarks at the workshop where he was the guest lecturer that FIFA  through the provision of appropriate medical kits and workshops, is encouraging affiliates to work towards the elimination of sudden deaths in football.

Kramer, the head of department of Emergency Medicine at the Wits University in South Africa first conducted training on emergency medicine for national teams' doctors in 2009 during the FIFA U-17 World Cup in Nigeria and disclosed that the League Management Company (LMC) through the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has been the first to request for Automatic Emergency Defrillibrators (AED) for clubs in their league.

"Nigeria has the worst record of football deaths on the pitch and the positive now is that your league has taken the step towards checking the problem. It is in compliance to what FIFA has been advocating" declared Kramer, who is a member of the FIFA Medical Committee.
During the workshop attended by team doctors of the 20 Glo Premier League and doctors from the National Sports Commission (NSC) attached to national teams, Kramer took them through theory and practical emergency procedures for cardiac seizures and related medical conditions in the course of a football match.

Director of the Medical Services Department of the NSC, Dr. Abdulkadir Muazu, said the  NFF and LMC have been collaborating with his department towards improving the league players' health and welfare leading to the design of pre-season medical screening templates.
He particularly commended the LMC for various measures introduced to enhance players' performance and listed some of these to include "organising of pre-season trainings for club doctors, providing medical supplies to all the clubs and fully paid health insurance policies for all players and officials of the clubs".

Chief Operating Officer of the LMC, Salihu Abubakar, admonished the participating club doctors to pay close attention to Professor Kramer's teachings and internalise them for application in practice when the need arises.
"Ordinarily, we could have simply distributed the medical kits but this seminar has been  organised to derive greater value from the AED's we are providing. We must extract maximum benefit from them," charged Abubakar.