Musculoskeletal Injuries and Disorders - A burden to Eswatini and Zimbabwe Sport

Abstract

Musculoskeletal injuries, predominantly the hamstring, lower back and neck pain, are a challenge to amateur, professional and elite athletes across a wide range of sporting codes. Contact sports pose a high risk to the lower back and neck pain. Professionals such as sports medicine physicians, physiotherapists, athletic trainers and clinical researchers are concerned with these injuries. This is due to their high prevalence, high risk of recurrence, high pain and disability as well as high costs for treatment and rehabilitation. There is scant literature on injuries affecting Southern African sport population, however, researches carried among Eastern, Central and Western Europe reveal that in footballers the most prevalent muscle injury, with a high recurrence within a year after initial injury is the hamstring; rated between 12%–33% [1]. Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) resulting from low back pain has also increased by 54% [2] reaching as high as 84% [3] between 1995 and 2017, where injured population are prone to experience more than one episode.