Dr Kate Khair, consultant nurse, shares her years of experience supporting children and young people with haemophilia in getting active.
It’s really important for children and adults with haemophilia to try to be as active as possible. In the past, as healthcare professionals, we tried to get people to avoid participating in sport because we thought it was dangerous. Now we’ve had a complete rethink … participating in sport is a really good thing because it improves your muscle strength, which supports your joints and makes you fitter in the short term. And it really helps with those long-term health issues we all have to consider, such as obesity and heart disease.
A Sometimes parents have concerns about the risk of injury, and that’s understandable. But as healthcare professionals, we need to educate parents about the benefits of exercise, and how they can mitigate the risk, so we can actually encourage activity.
There are a few things that they perhaps aren’t able to do — like boxing, where the risk of injury is too great. But actually, it’s about finding their own way of being active. So we should be trying to encourage them to do as much as they can and to try different things.
Not everyone wants to play football, but most young adults and boys with haemophilia want to be active in some shape or form — that might be tennis, swimming or cycling … or just taking the dog for a walk.
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