JEDDAH, Jan 3: Saudi authorities are working hard to ensure Haj pilgrims are disease-free and pose no threat to the country’s security. The director of the health control centre at Jeddah’s King Abdul Aziz airport proudly explains the screening procedures being carried out by his team.
“The first thing we did one month ago was compile a list of countries plagued with certain diseases,” says Dr Mohammed al Harthi.
He says special measures have been implemented to deal with pilgrims coming from Africa, the Sub-continent and countries like Egypt and Yemen where infectious diseases such as cholera and meningitis are common.
By Friday more than 1.1 million pilgrims had already arrived in Saudi Arabia, an interior ministry official said.
It is estimated that a total of two million pilgrims from all corners of the earth will come to perform Haj.
Most arrive by air in Jeddah, about 70 kilometres west of Makkah.
“Once a plane from a plagued country lands, we dispatch two inspectors,” says Dr Harthi. “The door of the aircraft is not opened until our people get there.”
He says inspectors collect a written certificate from the pilot confirming that the plane has been disinfected and check for empty spray canisters as proof.
Passengers are then bussed to a special pilgrims’ terminal where they are required to produce a clean bill of health from their home country and are given supplementary vaccinations where necessary.
Some 4,500 pilgrims from Kyrgyzstan will be vaccinated against meningitis — a disease involving the inflammation of the tissues around the brain or spinal chord, Dr Harthi said.
The Saudi authorities are paying for the inoculation because of the economic difficulties in the former Soviet republic, he added.
A glossy poster at the entrance to the airport clinic tells pilgrims to ‘pitch in to stop the spread of avian flu’.
But Dr Harthi says that, besides giving the clinic’s 350 staff the drug Tamiflu, no other exceptional measures have been taken to combat the threat of bird flu, which killed more than 70 people in Asia last year, 11 of them in Indonesia.
Hardjanta Imam Subandi, a 41-year-old pilgrim from Jakarta, flips open his passport to show an attached health certificate in both Arabic and English.
“Besides the required vaccines, no one in our caravan took Tamiflu. We put our faith in Allah,” he says.
Many pilgrims cover their mouths and noses with masks in public spaces.
Besides trying to prevent more stampedes like those that killed 251 people in 2003 and 1,426 in 1990, security forces are also on high alert against infiltration by militants as they continue to battle a wave of unrest blamed on Al Qaeda sympathizers.
Soldiers in green combat fatigues protect the perimeter of Jeddah airport while security force personnel in brown uniforms man checkpoints along the highways to Makkah and Madina.
In Makkah alone, a 10,000-strong force has been mobilized from security and civil defence units, the Okaz daily reported, citing its commander, Maj Gen Alwani Jeddawi.
“No to terror,” says a poster depicting a bloodied hand hung in the lobby of one of Makkah’s hotels. Pilgrims are invited to attend a lecture on the ‘evils of terror’ and take part in a raffle benefiting those killed in ‘the line of duty’.
Five policemen and two suspects on Saudi Arabia’s list of 36 most wanted militants were killed in clashes north of Riyadh over the past week. —AFP
