How pool testing can ease the pain for Uganda’s cash-constricted sporting entities in Covid-19 era

After being given the green light to resume activities, most Ugandan sporting disciplines remain in a state of flux. It’s obviously no great puzzle to work out why this is. Money. Or, more accurately, the lack of it. 

While it is a stretch to say that respective sports federations have fled chaotically from the green light, they have in fact not sufficiently worked out a model on how to beat a formidable challenge.

The pandemic has left Ugandan sport sinking deeper into the mire. How the story unfolds will depend on not much the money as ingenuity of those at the helm. Fufa has for instance offered to remove a millstone that is lodged round the neck of clubs expected to contest the Big League playoffs. 

The local football governing body has offered to do most of the heavy lifting when the second tier clubs carry out the mandatory polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests.

While the Shs 100m promised will go a long way in removing present obstacles, many crucial questions still remain about the future. Ugandan club football’s creaking pyramid remains threatened. The practicalities of Fufa picking up the tab on a regular basis remain open to dispute. So in a sense Fufa’s actions – as well meaning as they are – merely only serve to postpone the inevitable. The pyramid will crumple under the impact of events.

The offer of a shortcut has never been a worthy custodian of sustained success. A lasting solution should as such be the preoccupation of officials running the rule over Ugandan sport. Since the pathogen that causes Covid-19 cannot be wished away, officials should strive to steer a middle course between regular testing of athletes and affordability. 

Because there is nothing substantial on the table challenging the way Ugandan sport’s return and its limit is being perceived, allow your columnist to propose something novel. What if sporting entities were unburdened by subscribing to batch testing?

Here’s how batch testing works: samples of several people are combined in a solitary tube. Molecular biology methods are then put to great use, with patients getting a clean bill of health once results from the pool test are negative. 

If, however, the results from the pool are positive, each patient sample is tested individually. This approach has become a thread that runs throughout the Rwandan response to the pandemic. It matters enormously in the developing world where attempts to beat off poverty have been immensely protracted and usually fruitless.

Batch testing would have such rich resonance for cash-strapped sporting entities in Uganda (of which many abound). Instead of a 23-strong squad shelling out Shs5,531,500 on a single round of PCR tests, it would part with only Shs240,500 in the event that the pool test turns up negative. 

The beauty about such an approach is that it will compel clubs to sensitise their players about the implications of fouling things up. Any recklessness that shows itself true in not being pandemic-conscious could see a Shs240,500 swell more than 20 fold.

So rather than convulse in the throes of a prohibitively high testing bill, sporting entities should float the idea of pool testing to officials stewarding Uganda’s response to the pandemic. 

The win-win outcome that pool testing teases out is too captivating to pass up. It certainly puts in the shade the airy promises that different federations keep shoving down the throats of athletes entrusted to their care.

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Twitter: @robertmadoi