Evaluation of Environmental Health Knowledge and Practice Among Youth Football Players in Benghazi, Libya

Isam Denna

doi:10.11648/j.rs.20180301.15

Abstract

Environmental health issues and practices are important in sport to reduce the risk of diseases occurrence and transmission. However, there is lack of a data about them among football players in Libya. This study aims to assess the environmental health knowledge and practices among youth football players in Benghazi, Libya. The study involves 182 participants who were involved from five youth football clubs with age means (17 ± 1.3ys). Players filled self-prepared questionnaire, which contained two sections: environmental knowledge and practices. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS. Almost 62% of the participants had not attend any lecture about environmental health. Markedly, 58% of players sharing their tools with others; in particular towels and water bottles. 75% of the sample were non-familiar with the hazards of sharing tools and 65% did not know about blood-born infections and their transmission mode. 81% of participants did not receive vaccinations, and 125 did not receive any acclimation programs about playing in changed temperature environment. In this study, there was a lake of knowledge about essential environmental health issues as well as poor practices regarding to sharing tools, vaccinations and acclimation practices. Hence, establishment of environmental health education programs among footballer players is of great significant.

Highlights

Sport and exercise are considered to have long-term health benefits for participants; all physical activity carries risks that participants will sustain an injury or ill-health and these must be balanced against the benefits
Environmental health knowledge: The statistical analysis demonstrated that 62% of the sample had not attend any educational lecture about environmental health (Figure 1)
The most common cause for non -attendance is that the club did not provide this type of lecture (62%), 14% for non-interested, 3% of the sample did not have time, and about 21% of the participants had other reasons (Figure 2)

Summary

Introduction

Sport and exercise are considered to have long-term health benefits for participants; all physical activity carries risks that participants will sustain an injury or ill-health and these must be balanced against the benefits Environment in which the football players practice, compete and sometimes receive therapy for injuries in emergency cases, play an essential role in transmission of infectious pathogen among players (Turbeville et al, 2006). Football players are exposed to several risk factors in playing environment; which include; infections, thermal stressors (i.e. hot, cold, humid condition, etc). In this context, hot playing environment causes an increase in the core body players temperature and production of metabolic heat, which subsequently will reduce the exercise capacity and performance (Taylor and Rollo, 2014)

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Conclusion