July 22, 2007	Sunday	Rajab 06, 1428

ISLAMABAD, July 21: The health ministry has finally moved to make credible vaccination cards for Haj and Umra pilgrims. An operational strategy in this regard has been ordered after an inter-ministerial meeting at the health ministry, which had been convened to discuss a policy on international travel vaccination and certification.

There have been instances in the past when vaccinated pilgrims developed contagious diseases during their stay in Saudi Arabia raising concerns about the efficacy and reliability of the vaccination administered to them.

Officials claim that despite the sagging credibility of the ministry’s vaccination cards, the Saudi government hasn’t so far raised this issue with Pakistan at any forum.

Health ministry’s deputy director-general, Dr Zafar Lodhi, said the situation resulted because the pilgrims were not given the ‘right type’ of vaccine.

Dr Lodhi said the move is to facilitate the public, providing them protection against diseases “instead of just looking at it from the perspective of restoring credibility of the government’s cards”.

The pilgrims require trivalent Pneumococcal vaccine. However, they were being provided either monovalent or bivalent vaccine, because of which quite a few cases of meningitis in the past occurred among the pilgrims during their stay in Saudi Arabia.

All pilgrims would now be required to have trivalent vaccine. Additionally, children below the age of 15 years would be required to produce a certificate of polio vaccination.

The ministry has further decided that the vaccination for Hajj and Umra would be done only by the federal government hospitals at least 10 days before the pilgrims embark on pilgrimage.

“For convenience of the people and credibility of the vaccine, it was decided that only government hospitals and health institutions will issue the certificate of vaccination,” a ministry spokesman said.

The designated hospitals would be notified once the operational strategy is finalised. Procedures for ensuring validity and reliability of the vaccine of a particular batch as well as continuous un-interrupted cold supply chain would be streamlined.