Call to widen scope of
Sports Medicine

The Union Sports Ministry will take up widening the scope of Sports Medicine as a faculty of study and write to the Health Ministry in this regard, Sports Minister Uma Bharti said in Delhi on Tuesday.

"We will write to the Ministry of Health to widen the scope of Sports Medicine as a faculty of study," Bharti said while inaugurating the Indian Sports Medicine Congress 2001.

The minister said the existing academic curriculum in medical colleges does not include Sports Medicine as a subject and as a result the young doctors who come out of the medical colleges are not aware of the potential of Sports Medicine.

She added: "The government is looking into the need for providing sports medicine back-up at the new centres which are opening in different parts of the country.

"For this we need adequate trained manpower and equipment support. The state governments and the private sector also have to come in."

Several sports medicine experts from India and abroad are participating in the three-day Congress, which will discuss the increasing role of medicine in the field of sports and the challenges ahead.

Delivering the keynote address at the Congress, International Federation of Sports Medicine president Dr Eduardo Henrique De Rose lauded the progress made by India in this field.

The science of sports medicine originated in India and ancient Indian physician Sushruta was the first to realise the role of exercise in treatment, he observed.