Train­ing for the coun­try's se­nior na­tion­al foot­ball team has been stopped by the in­fil­tra­tion of the Sa­ha­ran dust.

Team doc­tor Akash Dhanai told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Sat­ur­day that the de­ci­sion to halt the train­ing pre­ma­ture­ly was a joint one be­tween him­self and coach Ter­ry Fen­wick be­cause of the ef­fects which can be detri­men­tal to the health of play­ers, staff and ba­si­cal­ly every­one.

Ac­cord­ing to Dhanai: "These ath­letes would have sim­i­lar med­ical con­di­tions to the gen­er­al pub­lic. The com­mon things that are as­so­ci­at­ed with the Sa­hara dust and the par­ti­cles in the Sa­hara dust would main­ly be res­pi­ra­to­ry con­di­tions, so you're look­ing at pri­mar­i­ly the hy­per­sen­si­tive type con­di­tions al­ler­gic rhini­tis, rhi­nos­i­nusi­tis which caus­es the av­er­age per­son to say their si­nus is act­ing up."

He not­ed: "Asth­ma is an­oth­er com­mon con­di­tion that can hap­pen in these ath­letes and there are play­ers with asth­ma. In this pop­u­la­tion with the ath­letes, those are the main things. In gen­er­al, the Sa­hara dust and the par­ti­cles can cause fur­ther res­pi­ra­to­ry com­pli­ca­tion on a long-term ba­sis, even in­creas­ing the risk of things like ob­struc­tive dis­eases, such as chron­ic ob­struc­tive pul­monary dis­eases, re­stric­tive dis­eases, in­ter­sti­tial lung dis­eases. Now, these are more gen­er­al but specif­i­cal­ly for this pop­u­la­tion and the play­ers at this age group, we're look­ing at al­ler­gic rhini­tis, rhi­nos­i­nusi­tis and asth­ma."

The na­tion­al team re­sumed train­ing on June 8, at the in­side field of the Po­lice Bar­racks in St James un­der heavy po­lice pres­ence. Train­ing be­came pos­si­ble on­ly af­ter coach Fen­wick was giv­en per­mis­sion by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith even though Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and his team of Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram and Health Min­is­ter Ter­rance Deyals­ingh had not yet giv­en per­mis­sion for sports to re­sume un­til June 22, fol­low­ing the coro­n­avirus (COVID19) pan­dem­ic which had shut down all sports glob­al­ly since March.

Ac­cord­ing to Dhanai the de­ci­sion to stop the train­ing ses­sion was pure­ly pre­cau­tion­ary as there has been no proven da­ta that dust from Africa can cause res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems in Trinidad and To­ba­go, how­ev­er, the rea­son why they will still take pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures is be­cause of the un­der­lined ef­fects of in­hal­ing dust etc.

It is un­sure how long train­ing has been stopped for but Dhanai said: "The Sa­hara dust does not have to sub­side to­tal­ly. The coach and I are in the process of meet­ing and dis­cussing these things. We are al­so in the process of do­ing prop­er as­sess­ments to the play­ers. Now giv­en all the con­straints we have, we are try­ing to make things work for the bet­ter­ment of the play­ers and present­ly, we are still do­ing as­sess­ments to de­ter­mine who are the play­ers that may be at high­er risk, and who are the play­ers that may be at a low­er risk. So, there­fore, we can de­ter­mine when we can start back to play and who are the play­ers we will be more con­cerned about when we do."