Al Zahra Hospital - Dubai a Private Sector Pioneer in Sports Medicine

Experts: Sports Medicine should keep pace with Dubai’s position as a global sports destination

Dubai, United Arab Emirates – 2nd April 2016: Dubai has lately been enhancing its global sports position, especially through the embracement of many international and regional sports tournaments and competitions, in addition to hosting prominent sports conferences like the 10th Dubai International Sports Conference, which has attracted world’s most famous sports figures. Specialists believe that the medical and sports medicine sectors are specifically requested to keep pace with this significant progress in the sports arena, and to provide health support for all athletes and sports activities.

“The massive development made in the sports medicine in the United Arab Emirates in general and Dubai in Particular was obvious to everyone over the past years. However, the upcoming stage requires the enhancement of development tools on a bigger scale and to push for establishing the foundations of a medical system that can achieve Dubai’s qualitative edge it aims to make in the sports field. It is known that any progress in this area and any entertaining goal to be achieved is synchronized with the economic objective, and is closely linked to the presence of qualified medical staff that is ready to face any emergency case or injuries of any kind!” said Ahmed Labib, MD, Orthopedic surg. Consultant, Al Zahra Hospital –Dubai

Sports medicine is known as a branch of medicine that deals with injuries caused by exercising and it covers all injuries that occur in schools courtyards or professional playgrounds. This medicine deals with the most popular sports injuries that affect bones, muscles and joints, in addition to various types of wounds and bruises, and with the most complicated cases of head injuries. Sports injuries can be worse that they may cause permanent disability, depriving the injured player from practicing sports for life.

Dr. Ahmed Labib pointed out that the sports medicine bill can go up to many billion dollars in the absence of specialized and qualified personnel to treat injuries on site as soon as possible especially that many of these cases can be treated or at least its complications can be reduced. Here we can refer to the American model as an example of the sports medicine significance. Many had recently stressed on the importance of providing sports medical care for schools students while the number of injuries among them has reached to more than a million per year, 50.000 of which need a doctor visit while 30.000 of which require them to stay in hospitals for treatment. 

He mentioned that on the professional sports level, 28% of football players have confirmed being injured while practicing the game, while 15% of basketball players are injured with varied injury levels while training or during competitions. Some of the numbers published in this regards might be more shocking, as they indicate that the number of sports injuries has increased five times since 2000.

He stressed that Al Zahraa Hospital- Dubai was one of the first private sector hospitals to alert about the importance of enhancing the sports medicine sector in Dubai in order to keep pace with the qualitative and quantitative development of the sports scene in the emirate, and to provide the best levels of medical care in this field, in a way that enhances its reputation and objective to be one of the most prominent sports destinations in the world.