2016 Olympics - Sport medicos call for world bodies to move Olympics

by Sail-World.com NZL on 4 Feb 2016 Two authorative correspondents with strong sports medicine backgrounds have called for the 2016 Olympics to be cancelled or moved after the Zika outbreak.

It now seems that the Zika virus can be transmitted sexually, and that means that the threshold for the disease encompasses all visitors, competitors and officials rather than just those who are pregnant.

While Forbes emphasises that the opinions of its correspondents are their own, they make some compelling points about the responsibilities of organising authorities.

Arthur Caplan and Lee Igel write:

It is beginning to look like the time has come to call off the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. The reason is simple: young women cannot travel there safely. While polluted water and security issues have already made things tough for anyone who would be a visitor there, now Brazil is on the front line of the mosquito-borne Zika virus epidemic.

To host the Games at a site teeming with Zika, an outbreak the World Health Organization has labelled a “public health emergency of international concern,” is, quite simply, irresponsible.

Who is going to go to Rio in the middle of a Zika outbreak? Not young women fans, who might get pregnant and risk giving birth to a child with a birth defect. Not male fans who are sexually active and risk transmitting the disease to a partner. Maybe the athletes, coaches, and other members of national Olympic teams will travel to Rio.

Imagine playing a sport so well that it earns you a spot on your country’s Olympic team. All of the time, sweat, and money you’ve dedicated to the pursuit have paid off in an opportunity to compete with the best in the world in your chosen sport. If you are one of those gifted and fortunate enough to be called on to head to the Rio Games, sure you want to go. This may be your only chance to participate in a Games.

Several athletes who are preparing to compete in Rio didn’t feel a need to wait for a WHO advisory. They’ve already started stocking up on bug spray, thinking about how to bide their time holed up in living quarters, and plotting ways to evade and repel mosquitoes.

So, athletes may still want to go to Rio. But there is no way the International Olympic Committee should let them. At the same time, corporations and media organizations need to think along the same lines, that is, putting safety ahead of their bottom lines.

The IOC needs to either move the Games, postpone them, or cancel them. Prevention is the best course in the face of a serious threat to humanity.

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