Maldives men's volleyball team withdrew from Tuesday's match against Chinese Taipei at the Doha Asiad after at least three of its players were confirmed to have chicken pox.

"Maldives team lost today's match against Chinese Taipei 0-3," said Shanrit Wongprasert, technical delegate of the Asian Volleyball Confederation (AVC) Tuesday afternoon in a press release.

"So far as I was concerned, five players of Maldives had or showed symptoms of chicken pox," Shanrit Wongprasert told Xinhua.

"The disease is easily spread and we have to make sure the players of other teams will be ok. That is our duty," he said.

Saeed Hussain, the 24-year-old spiker, also best player of Maldives, is first of Maldives team found with chicken pox and missed the team's first match with Kuwait on Sunday.

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

"We informed Maldives yesterday to take other players to have medical check in hospital, and once they had guarantee letter from doctor to prove other players have no problem with chicken pox, we will let them play, but they didn't take the players to hospital," said the AVC technical delegates.

Ibrahim Ali, chef de mission of the Maldives delegation, refused to made any comment about the AVC's decision.

"We are negotiating with the AVC," said Ibrahim Ali, "We went so far to come here to play, we can't leave now."

This match between Maldives and Chinese Taipei of Pool A was previously scheduled to begin at 12:00 Tuesday.

After its opponent's withdrawal, 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."

The men's volleyball event opened on Sunday with 16 teams competing for the title. 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, including Chinese Hong Kong, Macao and Chinese Taipei, have to compete for the remaining two berths for the quarterfinals.