Chicken pox spikes Maldives spikers, team returns home

DOHA, Nov 28 (UNI) Maldives spikers' hopes were spiked as they withdrew from the Volleyball competition of the Asian Games after confirmation that five of their players were hit by chicken pox.

Maldives failed to field a team against Chinese taipei and conceded the tie. '' Maldives team lost today's match against Chinese Taipei 0-3,'' said Shanrit Wongprasert, technical delegate of the Asian Volleyball Confederation (AVC) in a press release here this afternoon.

According to Wongprasert, '' Five players of Maldives had or showed symptoms of chicken pox. The disease can easily spread so we have to take precautions that players of other teams are not affected.'' Maldives main player, 24-year old Saeed Hussain, was the first to be found with chicken pox and missed the team's first match against Kuwait on Sunday.

'' Saeed Hussain is in hospital now and we know he has been isolated from the team and the organisation committee has arranged accommodation for him outside the athlete village,'' Wongprasert said.

'' We informed Maldives yesterday to take other players to have a medical checkup in hospital, and once they had the guarantee letter from doctor to prove that other players did not have chicken pox, we will let them play, but they didn't take the players to hospital,'' he added.

Maldives's Chef de mission Ibrahim Ali, however refused to make any comments but said, '' We are negotiating with the AVC. We came here from so far to play, we can't leave now.'' After getting the walkover, Chinese Taipei entered the preliminary round 2 as the top finisher of Pool A with Kuwait, which beat Maldives 3-0 on Sunday.

'' We are not worrying about the health of our players, but maybe the teams which had played with Maldives should,'' said Huang Kuo-Kuang, team leader of Chinese Taipei. '' We are now concentrating on the preparation for the matches later.'' Volleyball competition started here on November 26 with 16 teams taking part in it. Host Qatar has directly entered the last-eight list along with five world championship participants, namely China, Japan, South Korea, Iran and Kazakhstan.

However, another 10 teams, have to compete for the remaining two berths for the quarterfinals.

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