Jordi Rigg takes his Physiotherapist training project to Uganda

Alicante, Dec. 2 (EFE). – Alcoy physiotherapist Jordi Reig has moved his solidarity project to train physiotherapists to Uganda, where he will have a fixed headquarters for training Ugandans in the treatment of various injuries.

Reg, who is already in Uganda with 12 other people, calculated his project in collaboration with Across Africa, an NGO dedicated to developing and empowering local people, and the Joshua Cheptegei Foundation.

The 49-year-old from Alkoi had already had a similar project in Ethiopia since 2014 where he and other volunteers helped train doctors and athletes, but had to look for a new destination due to the political instability in the city. . Region.

At its peak, the project in Ethiopia had over 250 volunteers.

Joshua Cheptegei and Jacob Kiplemo, two high-profile Ugandan athletes, were crucial to the transition of this solidarity project to the center of the continent, which is more socially stable at the moment.

The goal, Reig told EFE of Uganda, is to create a permanent headquarters, with the help of the Joshua Cheptegei Foundation, where Spanish doctors can train local colleagues and treat athletes, as well as provide health and sports equipment.

“This highly anticipated trip and the signing of the agreement. Now this country is safe,” Reg explained, adding that the foundations have been laid “so that next year we will have 40 or 50 professionals to train Ugandans.”

“The idea is that each volunteer pays for their ticket to attend and that the organization pays for food and accommodation,” explains Reg.

“By creating a fixed headquarters we can extend the working time to the whole year so that each volunteer, depending on his holidays, can come here for a week, at least, at any time of the year,” Alcoyano said.

Jordi Reig asserts that in Uganda, there is “a lot of work to be done” in training athletic trainers.

“There are men who have unusual signs and lose the possibility of a future for them due to tendinitis or a sprain. Here, unfortunately, natural selection is at work and the boy can be left without a future due to a poorly treated injury,” he explains.

According to Rigg, athletics is for many Africans “a potential to improve their lives because it can allow them to compete at the highest level and support their families”.

The man from Alcoy traveled to Uganda with 500 kilograms of solidarity items including materials for physiotherapists and athletes, donated in the latest case by Sprinter Chain and New Balance.

The Spanish physiotherapist admitted that the global health situation is not conducive to the development of the project, especially after the new African strain of Covid.

Reig’s personal motive for taking on this adventure is clear. “Spain is among the elite of physical therapy and knows very well that it cannot share this knowledge with the people who need it most,” he explains.

His passion for the African continent arose after recording a program with Jesús Calleja in Ethiopia. “After that experience I decided to do something,” says the Valencian professional, who realizes that his help is only “a small grain of sand for what these people need.”

“I do not hide that I feel great personal satisfaction being rewarded in the arms of the athletes I have dealt with. This is not a humanitarian project, it is so that physicists can train better and thus help many athletes to reach the elite,” he says.

Pablo Verdo