PARIS, March 24: Doctors writing in a special Middle East issue of The Lancet call this week for greater efforts to forestall health hazards for more than two million Muslims who attend the Haj.

“This mass migration entails some of the world’s most important public-health and infection control problems,” says the review.

“Although the distances are small, the congestion of the Hajj poses high physical, environmental and health-care demands.”

The death toll from a stampede and a hostel blaze at this year’s Haj in January claimed 439 lives.

The authors, led by Ziad Memish of the King Fahad National Guard Hospital in Riyadh, detail a long list of potential health perils for pilgrims.

They include infectious diseases such as meningitis, tuberculosis and pneumonia; heat exhaustion; the risk of heart attack for people with cardiac problems; sunburn; and injury from stampedes and fires.—AFP