Sports physicians in Southern Africa are embracing the new anti-doping measures in football, known as the MODOC System.

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) held a three-day workshop in Johannesburg in an effort to ensure that African football is drug-free. The workshop was attended by all members of the Confederation of Southern African Football Associations (COSAFA).

Doping in African football is not rife, but the Confederation of African Football does not want to drop the ball. CAF is now using MODOC which is a new digital method to detect doping.

It was first introduced at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. It was used on the African continent for the very first time at last year’s Africa Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast.

This is the second workshop held in Africa for CAF member associations. The first one was held in Burkina Faso in December last year, and all six regions of CAF will be visited according to CAF’s Medical Committee member, Professor Yasser Abdel Rahman.

“We were here for the past three days in order to train our doping control officers from each and every member of COSAFA in the region here it’s CAF’s strategy now that we take doping control to another level. In each country, we want to have a minimum of three doping officers in each country.”

In the past, anyone could administer anti-doping tests, but the new measures only allowed qualified medical doctors to do so.

Dr Thulani Ngwenya, who is also a member of CAF’s Medical Committee, says they work very closely with the South African Institute for Drug-Free Sport to do in and out-of-competition testing.

“Well, I can say that in our country, we have done so well in football. The biggest challenge we have in our country I always say it’s cannabis, cannabis which we call weed in street language, it is banned in competition. So, during competition, it is banned. But now in South Africa, the South African law allows you to plant it in your own backyard so a lot of people, young people use it as a recreational drug because they say it calms them down but it’s all about education, education, education.”

One of the participating doctors at the medical workshop, Dr Isha Barreau from Seychelles Sports says the paperless system eliminates a lot of mistakes that were likely to happen with the old system.

“We’ve learned a lot of things for the past three days. CAF has just introduced a new MODOC system. When it comes to testing during the games, we will be online on the system no longer paperwork. We have learnt how to test a player doing it in a systematic way so that everything is done correctly in a fair manner that all the players fairly,” says Dr Isha Barreau.

Dr Naiken Gopalla from Mauritius says the new system is more advanced and accurate than the previous one.

“It was a very high level we’ve learnt new methods of doing anti-doping in our country and Africa, and we’ve learnt a new system it’s called a MODOC system where everything is online right now and it will hugely alleviate us the burden of doing everything on paper with that new system everything is fast, everything is systematic. If you miss something it automatically tells you, okay this is wrongly inserted and we immediately corrected it.”

Doping Control Officers were also made aware of the latest list of prohibited substances and supplements.