23 Oct 2017

Ministry of Youth Empowerment, Sport and Culture Development Assistant Minister, Kefentse Mzwinila says Botswana is doing well on issues of sport medicine.

In an interview, Mzwininla said it was important therefore that services such as physiotherapy, medicine, psychology, nutrition were provided to Botswana teams in every competition.

He said he was aware that both Botswana National Olympic Committee (BNOC) and Botswana National Sport Commission (BNSC) had dedicated officers responsible for sport medicine.

Nevertheless, he said he was happy that Botswana teams were always accompanied by experts in such areas whenever they travelled for competitions.

“Usually what happens is that when the team leaves, they are assigned a psychologist, medical doctor, and a physiotherapist. I travelled with our Youth Commonwealth Games team, and all specialists were assigned for the team,” he said.

That was despite the fact that the team that competed in the 2017 London World Championships in August did not travel with a psychologist.

However, Mzwinila said he was resolute that all experts in their different capacities accompanied teams because the ministry was concerned about recurring injuries on athletes which had over time denied the country a podium finish.

As such, he said there had to be a baseline to investigating the cause of injuries and how they could be dealt with hastily.

“There should be a way how we treat the injuries and the preventative part of injuries and that is the whole reason we need the whole medical team travelling with the team for close monitoring,” he said.

He highlighted the need for further research in all the sporting codes to come up with detailed findings and recommendations on dealing with sport injuries given that they continued to affect athletes’ performance.

“But if you look at our national teams in totality our track record in addressing injuries is tolerable because to my attention I have never heard of an incident where our medical teams had failed to address serious injuries,” he said.

Notwithstanding, Mzwinila said it was important to enhance the number of professionals assigned to the teams.

Meanwhile, BNOC is set to send a team for Commonwealth Games to be held in Gold Coast, Australia, in April with an ambitious target to bring eight medals.

Mzwinila said the goal was to send a well prepared and resourced team, saying “that would mean that the team should have all the necessary resources in terms of equipment, training, coaching, medical personnel as well as support at all different levels. ENDS