JEDDAH (Saudi Arabia) Dr Mahmoud Al Srouji peers at a laptop computer screen showing technicolour images of a group of Indian pilgrims filing by, just off a flight from Mumbai in Jeddah airport’s massive Haj terminal.
“They don’t know that we are already checking them,” he said, referring to the small thermal camera scanning each person for a high body temperature.
“It rings if the temperature is over 38 degrees Celsius,” he said. “It is so sensitive, if you light up a cigarette way over there, it will sound,” he said.
It is Saudi Arabia’s first line of defence for the annual Haj, with fears over the H1N1 flu pandemic, which has already killed four pilgrims, dominating the preparations to receive some 2.5 million faithful in the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah.
Srouji is just one cog in a massive operation to make the Haj work — several hundred thousand security officials, health workers, guides, translators, religious advisors and baggage handlers vying to do the impossible and make sure few get sick, lost, robbed or left behind on their once-in-a-lifetime trip to the holy land.
At Jeddah airport, Javeed Ahmed of Mumbai is on his 14th trip leading dozens of Indians on the Haj. He said the Saudi management has improved year by year, and newly rebuilt Haj terminal arrival facilities have vastly alleviated past hassles.
“This is much better than before,” when tens of thousands of people would be pushing and shoving in passport and luggage queues.
It is chaos, but altogether pretty efficient, says French consul Christian Nakhle, who has to care for as many as 30,000 pilgrims coming from France.
“We all work 24 hours a day, seven days a week for several weeks,” he said.
At the airport’s Haj terminal a passenger jet lands every few minutes, disembarking pilgrims from around the world into a huge hall decorated with welcome banners and Panasonic advertisements.
It is a huge mixing bowl of ethnicities and germs. But Srouji said that of the 5,000 people a day who pass by his camera alone — there are 11 other such stations — so far he has picked up only one person with a feverish temperature.
As well as the flu, the doctors police for vaccinations, and have already pushed on arriving pilgrims 300,000 oral polio vaccines, and 100,000 meningitis prophylactic-antibiotic combinations.
“We have to watch them take it,” says the terminal’s medical director Dr. Mohammed Al Harathy.
Caring for so many is not just a government effort. Hundreds of travel agents and foreign missions are all working round the clock to deal with myriad problems, says Nakhle.
Agence France-Presse
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