Dr. Zynul Khan aims to offer more services at athletes at National Sports Clinic

The Guyana Olympic Association’s Sport medicine group is aiming to improve services offered at the National Sports Clinic to better assist athletes.

Local athletes are expected to benefit from an expansion and improvement in services from the National Sports Clinic at the Castellani House, according to Sports and Exercise Medicine Doctor, Dr. Zynul Khan – who is in charge of the Guyana Olympic Association’s Sport Medicine Group.

“That’s one of the things we’re engaging with the ministry (of sports) to see how we can add greater value to it and really start pushing the level of athletes’ availability or the availability to athletes for the management.”,

Dr. Khan noted.

History

The National sports clinic was first established in the 1970’s by the Ministry of Health.

At this time, it had the notable distinction of being among the first of such clinic to be established in the English speaking Caribbean.

The clinic provided sports medicine services for athletes of various sporting disciplines and was managed by professional Physiotherapists on a rotational basis.

Unfortunately, in the early 1990’s this facility closed due to shortage of professional staff to manage the clinic.

The clinic was later re-established by the Disability & Rehabilitation Services, Ministry of Health in collaboration with the Office of the President formally opened the National Sports Clinic at the Castellani Pool House late February of 2015.

Director of Rehabilitation Services Debita Harripersaud at the re-launch said,

"To facilitate the sportsmen, a reduced service was offered twice weekly at the Physiotherapy Department, Georgetown Public Hospital. However, with this system athletes were required to enroll in the regular out-patient clinic to receive treatment, which resulted in lengthy delays for the athletes."

The clinic aims to provide the professional guidance athletes and coaches need to help athletes achieve fitness and expediently recover from injuries.

It was also intended to comprehensively cater for the sports medicine needs of sportsmen and women nationally with a vision of functioning as a Sports Rehabilitation Centre of Excellence in the Caribbean.

"Due to the large patient load at the hospital, it became quite a challenge to afford priority attention to the athletes in the face of serious debilitating medical conditions: to date some of these challenges still exists and in this regard the re establishment of the National Sports Clinic is both timely and necessary.”

Harripersaud added.

The overall management of the National Sports Clinic was handed over to Beverly Nelson, who took up the role with 25 years of experience in rehabilitation and was one of 2 specialist sports physiotherapist in Guyana.

Present Day

The clinic is still active in many capacity as it relates to rehabilitating athletes after injuries.

Dr. Charlyn Elliot, who also works with the sport medicine group, said

“They have a doctor there, they have physiotherapists, I think they also have a dietician there, they’re very active. Of course they also have the pool there that people also go to for physiotherapy.”

There is however the challenge of having minimal personnel available there.

This is where the sport medicine group will be coming in to expand and enhance services offered to better cater to larger amounts of athletes in terms of recovery, rehabilitation and return to play.