MADO for increased doping awareness

By Precious Msosa

Malawi Anti-doping Organization (MADO) has called for more increased doping education among the athletes by their respective national sports association in order to safeguard the athletes.

Speaking during anti-doping workshop for journalists and some sports administrators at Mpira Village in Blantyre recently, MADO board member and education chairperson Oscar Kanjala said trends and innovations are emerging on a daily basis and therefore this calls for sports authorities to remain vigilant.

“It’s not just about having one session throughout their career, issues about doping and violations about doping are happening every day. There are many trends coming up, there are many innovations so as a result we are being required to have education as a continuous process. So we cannot just stop here and say we have done our part and then we fold our arms,” said Kanjala.

Kanjala: Sports associations should be vigilant (Photo Credit: Internet)

He added: “This is why we are requesting the national Associations and all people that are connected including you the media to ensure that we keep on each other’s toes to ensure that we are doing the right things as and when required. If there is an athlete out there who has not heard about the news about doping in sports then it is going to be our problem so let us make sure that Malawi plays clean whenever and wherever required to participate.”

Asked how our local associations are faring on doping, Kanjala expressed hope that as an organization, they have taken the necessary first step and what remains is how the respective sports bodies react, act and how they coordinate their programs as regards anti-doping education.

However he said as a country, Malawi is one of the few countries in southern Africa that has conducted significance numbers of doping tests despite it being a very expensive venture. According to him, a test on one athlete costs around USD 600 (around K1.2 million).

Some of the participants to the training (Photo Credit: Precious Msosa)

“We cannot test everybody as we just do random sampling and normally we target the top most athlete or team in a competition. So yes we may not test everybody but statistically we are doing very well but what we want to do even better is education because we are aiming at prevention rather than curing,” he said. In his remarks, vice president for Malawi Paralympic Committee (MPC) Joseph Galanje said the training was an eye opener because it will help them enlighten their athletes on the dangers of doping.