NORTHERN NEWS

Marakele Marathon - a race for conservation and health

By Lesley Nyawo

Marakele Marathon athletes at the marathon starting point

SANParks’ Marakele National Park hosted the 13th annual Marakele Marathon on Saturday, 5 March 2022 in partnership with SANParks Honorary Rangers, Coca-Cola South Africa and the Marakele Marathon Club. This year’s marathon was a physical event, following a virtual marathon in 2021. The 2022 marathon took into consideration COVID-19 social distancing restrictions as directed by the South African Government for outdoors events.

A distinctive attribute of the Marakele Marathon beyond maintaining a healthy lifestyle and creating awareness on uniqueness of the park is the meaningful contribution towards conservation efforts that is realised from proceeds generated by the marathon, which confirms the SANParks vision of “a world class system of sustainable national parks reconnecting and inspiring society.” The marathon’s start and finish points were marked at the park gate. A 5km fun run, highly participated by family members of various age groups, officially

Prize giving ceremony (Marakele National Park Manager: Mphadeni Nthangeni & Coca-Cola South Africa Manager

kicked off the Marakele marathon at 06h00. Other categories of the marathon consisted of 10, 21 and 42km run in the heart of the Waterberg mountains which is home to an impressive variety of wildlife.

The marathon saw top achievers receive medals and prizes in various distance categories, noting top achievers as follows:

OVERALL WINNER DISTANCE COMPLETION TIME 1. Charles Soza 42km 2 hours 42 minutes 26 seconds 2. Thato Kekana 21km 1 hour 17 minutes 38 seconds 3. Noah Motimedi 10km 34 minutes 53 seconds

Celebration was the order of the day over lunch at the food garden with a variety of food and beverages representing various cultures and flavors which is ideal for social cohesion, diversity and cultural inclusion for athletes, family members who came to support them as well as nature enthusiasts in general.

Living with haemophilia

Diagnosis

Haemophilia

As soon as a child is diagnosed, parents should take precautions to prevent or reduce the occurrence of bleeding. Many of these recommendations also apply to older people with haemophilia: Choose soft toys without sharp corners. Educate your child from an early age. Follow the recommended immunisation programme. Injections must be given under the skin and not into the muscles. Hepatitis B vaccination is strongly advised as some blood products still transmit this virus. Hepatitis A vaccination is also recommended. Visit the dentist to prevent tooth decay and gum disease. Regular exercise is beneficial. Contact sports should be banned.

Symptoms of haemophilia include: Bruising Spontaneous bleeding Bleeding into joints and pain and swelling Gastrointestinal tract and urinary tract bleeding leading to blood in the stool or urine Prolonged bleeding from cuts, tooth extraction and surgery

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Treatment

The essence of treatment is to replace the missing clotting factors. Clotting factors are concentrated from donated blood and then transfused into haemophiliacs. Treatment is effective, although a small number of people do develop inhibitors or antibodies to the transfused clotting factors, making them ineffective. This presents a major problem.

Haemophilia is an inherited bleeding disorder caused by a deficiency in clotting factors. Haemophilia affects men only. Women who are carriers (have one abnormal gene, but no illness) can pass on the condition to their male offspring and their daughters may become carriers. There are two types; Haemophilia A involves a deficiency in factor VIII, and is the most common (about 85% of all haemophilia is A), Haemophilia B involves a deficiency in factor IX. Haemophilia affects 1 per 10000 men at any one time.

Causes

Haemophilia is a “recessive sex-linked” inherited condition and this is the explanation of how it works: Men have an X and a Y chromosome (XY) Women have two X chromosomes (XX) The gene for haemophilia is found on the X chromosome, and it is “recessive”, which means that a person will not have the disease if they have another normal X chromosome. Parents donate one of their sex chromosomes each, to their children. Women always donate an X chromosome (they are XX). Men may donate an X or a Y (they are XY). A male child (XY) must have got his X from his mother and his Y from his father. Such a child can only get haemophilia if the X from his mother is abnormal. If his mother is a carrier, he has a 50 per cent chance of getting haemophilia because only one of her two X chromosomes is abnormal. Female children (XX) of men with haemophilia are always carriers because they must have got an X from their father (XY). Female children (XX) of female carriers (XX) have a 50 per cent chance of becoming carriers.

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