Paralympics

The Paralympics

As the second week of the Paralympics comes to an end. it is opportune to analyse the significance of this extraordinary public event. A hundred and forty six countries sent athletes to London to compete in the same magnificent facilities used by the Olympics a month earlier. The overwhelming impression was one of enormous courage, skill and sportsmanship. The method of classifying the disabilities was complicated and inevitably some degree of inequality stepped in, for example, single and double lower limb amputees competed together. It is debatable whether that was a fair match. Similarly in swimming, upper limb and lower limb ablations were treated as similar handicaps. Many more examples can be quoted. Putting that aside, the competitors gave the spectators an insight into the challenges faced by them on a day to day basis. Races competed by blind athletes assisted by guides were particularly humbling.

The games gave to this observer another and arguably very important insight namely a bird's eye view of the incidence and causation of the conditions underlying the disabilities. The physical ones comprised, in no special order, trauma, cerebral palsy, polio, drug induced limb deformed such as Thalidomide, blindness birth or acquired etc. etc.

Of these the following are either treatable or avoidable, much trauma, polio, birth trauma leading to Cerebral Palsy, much blindness etc. Thus although the games reflected the enormous resilience of human beings there is a sadness that many of these conditions hadn't been avoided for example by by better birth care to minimise Cerebral Palsy, Innoculation to prevent Polio, Public health measures to prevent secondary blindness, withdrawal of drugs as in Thalidomide etc. etc.

In an ideal world, none of these conditions would exist and that is a target to which all countries developed and developing should aim.