NAGOYA: The numbers are as fascinating as the work they do. Four hundred fifty kilograms of medical equipment; five massage tables, with one portable one; five individual ice bath barrels; 150 kilograms of medicines in 20 boxes, including drugs to fight infections, painkillers and other symptomatic medicines. And `50 lakh to transport everything medical-related from India to Japan. And tele-consultations whenever required.
It doesn’t end there. Setting up a war room to monitor athletes, a game-ready cryo-compression unit that uses cold water circulation for recovery, as well as tele-consultation and more. All these for athletes. There have been instances when they have got a call at 2am. Finally, they get about three to four hours of sleep. Monitoring is crucial. In a decentralised Asian Games like this, it becomes even more challenging. “You have got multiple fronts in multiple areas," says Dinshaw Pardiwala, chief medical officer of the Indian Olympic Association's (IOA) medical unit. "You have to have real-time monitoring,” he adds during an interaction with this daily.
While India's leading athletes are winning medals in front of the camera, behind the scenes, Pardiwala and his crew ensure that athletes are capable of performing to their highest potential on an everyday basis. On Tuesday morning, he was in the stands for a match featuring PV Sindhu. By nightfall, he had seen the women's cricket team claim gold.
Pardiwala, who has been responsible for mending the bones of elite athletes for a very long time, was at pains to explain why this has already been a challenging Games. “It’s slightly challenging Games only because the format is so different,” he says following that Sindhu encounter. “In these events like the Olympics or the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games, we are used to a central athletes' village and everyone being together. With this new format of people staying separately, it was a challenge."
The celebrity sports ortho said that they were quick to adapt with little tweaking here and there. “The Indian Olympic Association (IOA), Sports Authority of India (SAI) and the sports ministry, have really gone out of their way... more than the other countries in trying to make sure that it's an athlete-centric Games (from an Indian perspective). Everyone's well supported."
“What we had to do was adapt the medical and recovery services that we give to our athletes. In the past, we used to have one central recovery room. This time, the challenge was that we were expecting to have a central recovery room, because we were promised that. But then, because of all the last-minute athlete problems, that had to be converted into athletes’ accommodation.”
That forced them to divide their team. “We have divided our team... each of the different teams is taken care of. For the larger teams, for example, cricket, hockey, badminton, athletics, boxing and shooting, it's not too much of a problem, because they already have their full medical support. But smaller teams don’t. So for the smaller teams who have come without physiotherapists, or without doctors... then the IOA team, instead of being in a central recovery room, we now have to disperse and send everyone out, so that all of our athletes are covered, and that's working out well.”
The medical team is catering to the needs of athletes who are in Tokyo, like the swimming team. The surfers are 3-4 hours away in Tahara city, while some are two hours away in Kamakura. “It's impossible for three doctors to be evaluating those patients and handing out medicines,” he says. So they have found a novel way to tackle it. “What we have done is, we have got medicine starter packs, where the drugs are with each team. Then we do a tele-consultation. We really don't need to do a physical evaluation, or if we need to do that, we can do that via video conference. So that's saved us a lot of time. It's improved our response times."
A device used by IPL teams at their disposal
The medical team has the sought-after Normatec, an air compression device aiding in athlete recovery (IPL teams also use this).
Besides this, the medical team has things like ultrasound, therapeutic ultrasound and electrotherapy. “It’s almost half a ton of equipment. We had to bring it ourselves. That was a bit of a challenge, including 20 boxes of medicines,” he says.
It is not easy to take these machines out of India “When you're taking this equipment out of the country, you are going to bring it back,” he says. “All equipment is going to be reused for the next Games. It's expensive equipment. It all stays with... those are owned by the IOA and SAI... every time there's a big event, we go ahead and get them.”
The doctor also revealed that most of their prior statistical surveillance has shown that the number one thing that affects athletes is upper respiratory tract infections. “It's surprising because one thinks it's got to be injuries and muscle aches. But, you know, if you look at every contingent, not just the Indian contingent, the No. 1 illness is upper respiratory tract infection. No. two is usually aches and pains. And then the third becomes injuries.”
With just three days over at the Games, Pardiwala and his team will get busier. Hopefully, like in previous Games, the medical team will truly deliver. Oh, and lastly, before they came, they also had to prepare like athletes. "We had to get a special medical licence before coming to Japan."
