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Doctors recommend medical screening for 20km of Brussels
Medical screening of each participant before a mass sporting event should be mandatory, according to Pedro Brugada, heart specialist at UZ Brussel, and sports doctor Chris Goossens, following Sunday’s death by heart failure of one of the runners of the 20km of Brussels.
"People overestimate themselves and underestimate the race," said Goossens. “In France, you are only allowed to participate in such an event if you pass the medical screening beforehand. It is high time that Belgium also required that.”
According to Brugada, the number of participants is a problem. “More than 40,000 people running through the streets at once; that's too much, too dangerous. It's really irresponsible to allow them all to run without prior screening and thorough preparation.”
Comments
Let's see - the crude death rate for Belgium is about 9.6 per thousand, so for a group of 40,000 we would expect 384 deaths per year, or slightly more than 1 per day...
It is up to the people themselves to arrange for screening, it's their life
It is up to the people themselves to arrange for screening, it's their life
If it's so dangerous why don't they ban the whole thing and avoid all the traffic snarl ups that it causes and of course increased pollution.