Concussions in school sports are barely tracked in Quebec, says a Radio-Canada investigative journalist TV show.
Photo Credit: Radio-Canada- Enquete

Quebec ignores concussion risk in school sports

In spite of increasing awareness about the risks of concussions in sport, especially in young players, at least one province in Canada is not tracking the situation.

The mostly French-speaking province of Quebec, has about 30,000 young rugby-football players, and some 186,000 student athletes in all sports. But,according to an investigation by the French language public broadcaster Radio-Canada, neither Football Quebec nor the Quebec Student Sport Federation ( RSEQ- Reseau du Sport Etudiant du Quebec) has anyone in charge of safety.

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The Quebec school sports organization says it doesn’t keep track of concussion statistics, while Football Quebec says it they got concussion reports they would simply put them on a shelf as they have no staff to deal with them. © RDI

An investigation by the Radio-Canada current affairs TV show “Enquete”.also shows that Football Quebec’s  safety regulations do not contain a single line about the obligation for teams to implement any kind of protocol regarding the detection and management of concussions, not to mention a protocol on returning to the game after being on the receiving end of a head injury.

“If we get concussion reports…we’ll just put them on the shelf” Football Quebec

Journalists from “Enquete” spent last fall on sports fields watching student football games, they said they saw between 5 to 10 concussions per team that season.

Alain Cloutier assistant trainer at College Jean-Eudes high school says they have a trained medical therapist at every one of their games. He says last year they identified 12 concussions on their football team.   He says that for some football teams to indicate they’ve had no concussions is practically impossible

When Enquete later asked Alain Roy, the director of the RSEQ, for the exact number of concussions afflicting young football players last year, he wasn’t able to provide a number.

“We don’t currently have the tools in place for this kind of census,” Roy told Radio-Canada.

High schools are supposed to submit incident reports for every concussion to Football Quebec.

However, the organization’s director Jean-Charles Meffe also seemed unaware of the extent of the problem.

When asked whether he thought Enquête’s observation of between five and 10 concussions per team was a realistic number of injuries, he said he’d be surprised if it were true.

Meffe said he rarely gets reports of concussions, and when he does, Football Quebec doesn’t follow up — and that’s fine by him.

“We’re happy to not receive them. There are only two of us and if we’re inundated with them (concussion reports) we’ll accept them, but we’ll just stick them on a shelf,” Meffe said, referring to the organization being short-staffed.

Dr. Dave Ellemberg, a specialist in head injuries who wrote a book on concussions in sports says, “We are easily 10 years behind in Quebec, and also in Canada, on the management of concussions.

He added, “This means that our young people are risking their lives in playing these sports,”

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