Fabrice Muamba is a sign of God’s love for mankind
FABRICE Muamba: Anorak’s round-up of the gravely ill Bolton Wanderers player in the news:
The press have adopted Fabrice Muamba as as cause. The Independent leads with:
Fabrice Muamba: Adopted son who thrived in the face of adversity
The Daily Express, Daily Star and Daily Mail also love Muamba. But it wasn’t always so. Please read: “Fabrice Muamba turns from sponging black immigrant to footballing hero.”
The Daily Star’s front-page headline offers:
JOY AS MUAMBA SAYS FIRST WORD
Fabrice Muamba is 23.
FABRICE Muamba’s family have had their prayers answered after he spoke for the first time since his collapse, and smiled at a pal’s jokes.
So. Praying does work.
The Mirror sees that first word and leads with Muamab’s “first words”. “Where;’s Josh,” says the headline.
And as the midfielder spoke for the first time since he collapsed after a cardiac arrest on Saturday, his delighted fiancée Shauna Magunda announced to worried fans their prayers had been answered. The 27-year-old, mother of his son Joshua, three, tweeted: “All your prayers are working people thank u so so much. Every prayer makes him stronger. To God be the glory.”
Yesterday, the Sun said “God Is In Control”. Do we find God in intensive care?
Terence Blacker notes “The Muamba Effect”:
At a moment of crisis, an old-fashioned kind of religion has taken centre-stage. For those of us who are non-believers, this instinctive turning to the heavens is startling. It was only last month, after all, that Baroness Warsi was warning of “aggressive secularism” being imposed on Britain. We are forever being reminded of our culture’s crisis of faith, not least by the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.
Members of the Crown Nomination Commission whose job it is to find a successor to Dr Williams would be wise to bear in mind the Muamba effect.
Is Fabrice Muamba the saviour of the Church of England?
Today Sun decides that the start of what we hope is Muamba’s recovery is worthy of a front-page proclamation:
MUAMBA SPEAKS
Another person speaking is Dr Andrew Deaner’s wife. He’s the “heart specialist who raced to Fabrice Muamba from the crowd”. Mrs Deaner says:
“Whenever he’s seen someone collapse he has gone and helped. I’ve lost count of the times it has happened.”
And, as the Yorkshire Evening Post says, it happens in squash:
Saturday’s incident at White Hart Lane, where Bolton Wanderers player Fabrice Muamba collapsed, is unfortunately not an entirely new one. Although the figures suggest it is still relatively rare, there is a distressing trend where young, seemingly healthy and fit people, often professional athletes, die from undiagnosed heart conditions.
In just the past few weeks two very public cases have drawn attention to this hidden affliction: Robbie, the 19-year-old son of Castleford Tigers coach Ian Millward, died suddenly in February and on Saturday in front of thousands of sports fans the world over, the desperate situation involving Muamba unfolded.
Many footballing fans will instantly recall the relatively recent deaths of Marc Vivien Foe, Antonio Puerta and Phil O’Donnell, all young and in the prime of their footballing lives.
All tragic. But are four deaths a trend? Foe died in 2003.
Of course these conditions are not restricted to footballers, though they are the most high profile victims. A few years ago a 22-year-old squash player, Neil Desai, from Surrey, died whilst asleep on holiday, to the utter devastation of his family and the squash community. CRY, which stands for Cardiac Risk in the Young, was founded in 1995, and it raises awareness of these trends, promoting research and screening programmes designed to detect these mystifying conditions.
They state on their website that: “Every week in the UK at least 12 young people die suddenly from undiagnosed heart conditions”.
The Daily Mail senses a scare story and announces:
The hidden heart timebomb: After Fabrice Muamba’s collapse, how thousands are in danger from undetected heart problems
Adding:
…Sanjay Sharma, professor of clinical cardiology at St George’s University Hospital, London, who is screening the Tottenham Hotspur players who were playing Bolton when Muamba collapsed. He says the screenings, which include an electrocardiogram (ECG), pick up 80 per cent of conditions causing sudden death. The most common is cardiomyopathy — a thickening or abnormal development of the heart muscle.
There are four types of cardiomypathy, the most common of which is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a genetic defect. If one parent carries the gene for HCM, a child has a 50 per cent chance of inheriting the condition.
While about 10,000 British people are known to have it, experts think up to 120,000 could be living with it, but don’t know it.
What experts wer are not told. The Mail is just content to make us aware and leave it at that.
Fabrice Muamba has been turned into a cause, a sign of God’s love for mankind and England’s finest by a press that feeds off a crisis…
Posted: 20th, March 2012 | In: Sports Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
