Jesse Lingard, Gary Lineker and Harry Redknapp have joined calls for thousands of defibrillators to be funded at football clubs around the UK following Christian Eriksen’s collapse at Euro 2020.
Denmark’s team doctor Morten Boesen said the midfielder “was gone” after suffering a cardiac arrest during the nation’s opening fixture at the tournament against Finland, with the 29-year-old having been revived by medical staff on the pitch.
With Lingard, Lineker and Redknapp among the high-profile signatories, Fifa’s Ethics and Regulations Watch has since written to the Football Association (FA), the Premier League and the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) to ask for their support in funding a Football Cardiology Unit to build further on the 2000 defibrillators already provided for grassroots clubs.
The British Heart Foundation estimate that Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a condition which can cause sudden cardiac arrest, is present in around one in 500 of the UK’s adult population.
Yet while heart attacks claim the lives of 12 under 35s a week in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, thousands of grassroots clubs are still operating without sufficient medical equipment.
Since Fabrice Muamba’s cardiac arrest during Bolton Wanderer’s FA Cup tie against Tottenham Hotspur in March 2012, it has become standard for Premier League and Football League clubs to have a defibrillator on site.
The reality is that many amateur, and even semi-professional clubs, cannot afford one.
The “Heartbeat Campaign” wants a two per cent levy on all acquisition transfers in the Premier League, which would raise almost £25m for the proposals. At the current rate, it would take around 70 years to provide a defibrillator to every club even if 600 are provided on average a year.
Eriksen’s case is sadly far from unique, but it has put the lack of funding in grassroots football under more scrutiny than ever.
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from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/2UIOxLk
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