Background
Health, safety, and well-being are a shared responsibility of the FGG, its member organizations, Gay Games hosts, and participants.
In particular, the Host must provide the means to ensure the safety and well-being of all participants and spectators in the Gay Games, while participants must be made aware of their own role in their health and safety.
1.1 Health and safety during all Gay Games events:
The Host must provide sufficient medical support at all events: sports competitions, ceremonies, and any other events it manages. It must ensure that events it contracts out to third parties also provide appropriate medical support.
Appropriate medical support includes at the least, qualified first aid providers on site.
Appropriate medical equipment and supplies must be available on site, including ice packs, heat packs, braces, defibrillator, etc.
Note that while emergency medical technicians/paramedics are desirable, it is also wise to provide qualified sports trainers able to deal with sport-specific injuries so as to decrease recovery time.
Events with a large number of participants or particular risks (for example, road races) should have emergency medical technicians and/or medical doctors on site.
The Sport Red Book for each sport will strive to include particular risks.
Event managers must take into consideration the capacity of venues and the risks associated with the movement of large numbers of people into, out of, and within venues.
Host sports managers must report incidents requiring intervention by medical staff to FGG Sports Officers within 24 hours of any incident.
The Host should prepare an incident reporting protocol to do this before the start of the Games.
Incident reports will be part of the Host Blue Book.
The Host must make the following recommendations available to participants at time of registration (in addition to any legal waivers required):
Participants with pre-existing injuries or medical conditions, including pregnancy, should:
- Obtain expert advice from qualified medical practitioners before participating, understand their advice, and assess the risks involved.
- Discuss the issues and implications of competing with other people in their sporting environment (coaches, team members, managers, other participants).
- Use common sense and not take unnecessary risks.
- Take into account their physical condition at the time of the event.
- Follow expert medical advice during training for the event.
- Take into account the conditions for travel to and from the event, and while living there.
- If participating, be prepared to provide any medical history or documentation that may be required for medical treatment
- The decision to play is with the participant, but participants must weigh the benefits of training for and competing in the event with regard to injury and risk to themselves.
- Officials may, however, intervene if they consider that the condition of the participant creates a risk to the health or safety of the participant or others.
1.3 Medical confidentiality
The Host must strictly respect medical confidentiality in its dealings with participants.
1.4 Personal responsibility, sexually transmitted infections, recreational drugs
The Host must make available information on local resources for health and medical care in all relevant documentation (website, participant guide, etc.).
The Host must include information on personal responsibility and risky behaviors in all documents aimed at participants and spectators. This includes safer sex, the use of condoms and other measures, and the risks of recreational drugs, both direct risks, and risks with regard to unsafe sexual activity.
The Host is encouraged to engage with partners, NGOs, medical institutions, etc. in these efforts, and to provide an information booth on these and related issues (including those described below) in the Gay Games Village(s).
