BNOC pushes for autonomous anti-doping office
Calistus Kolantsho | Friday June 12, 2020 10:43
BNOC chief executive officer, Tuelo Serufho said it was imperative for the anti-doping office to be independent from BNOC and Ministry of Youth Empowerment, Sport and Culture Development (MYSC).
“I would say for a small office and a bit of an increase on testing, it will cost P4 million annually, as a start,” Serufho said.
The local anti-doping office falls under the BNOC, but there are moves to make it an independent body.
Meanwhile, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has released the COVID-19 guidance on testing. The manager for Africa Zone VI Regional Anti-Doping Organisation, Andrew Kamanga told Mmegi Sport the guidance on testing is already in effect.
“It requires some refresher training for the Botswana Doping Control Officers (DCOs) just to ensure that they can handle testing in the COVID-19 pandemic era,” he said.
“As for education, we have already been encouraging our member countries to utilise social media and other digital technologies to reach out to athletes and athlete support personnel (coaches, managers, doctors etc) and provide them with relevant anti-doping information and awareness programmes.”
Kamanga said testing was never suspended rather they have been following the government COVID-19 regulations. However, WADA suspended tests because some of the testing laboratories were closed. Kamanga said they have never struggled to locate an athlete when they want to test.
“Elite athletes complete whereabouts information and we can locate them if we want,” he said.
WADA urged athletes to emerge from the pandemic as clean as possible. Some of the new guidelines are that, the status of the virus in a given country should be indicated, and whether there are movement restrictions.
“An example being like whether individuals in the relevant country are allowed to circulate or are movements very restricted given the number of individuals infected with the virus.
Are sport and competitions beginning to resume in that country,” reads the WADA statement.
There should be need to establish if Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) availability is low. If it is low, it would be difficult to Sample Collection Personnel (SCP) or potentially jeopardise availability to front line health care providers.
WADA encourages anti-doping organisations (ADOs) to consider a phased-in approach as they resume testing based on the following criteria, out of competition testing and small testing missions.
The statement also said, as competitions are currently not taking place in most countries, ideally ADOs should focus on out of competition home visits where only one athlete is tested.
“To keep the number of SCP to a minimum for each mission, consider collecting urine samples only. Blood sample collection could be considered if intelligence warrants it,” WADA said.
The body said the focus should be on higher risk athletes being those who are in the Registered Testing Pool (RTP).
“Those are athletes from high risk sport or disciplines. (Such as) Athletes from sport and disciplines where training is still possible including training at home. You should also focus on athletes from whom there is intelligence or suspicious Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) profiles and Athletes Passport Management Unit (APMU) recommendations for testing.”