Will the hajj be an incubator for swine flu? (2.5mil expected to travel to Saudi Arabia)

[LynneSin]

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/saudi-arabia/091102/hajj-swine-flu

Will the hajj be an incubator for swine flu?

Millions walk, pray and eat together during the hajj. How Saudi Arabia is trying to minimize the swine flu risks.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — As millions of Muslims begin arriving in Mecca for this year’s pilgrimage, Saudi officials face a unique challenge: how to prevent this sacred rite from becoming an inadvertent incubator and global transmitter of swine flu.

The conditions that will arise during the pilgrimage, or hajj, which officially begins in the last week of November, are the exact opposite of what health officials like to see.

An estimated 2.5 million people from up to 160 countries — including perhaps 15,000 from North America — will walk, pray and eat in close proximity to each other for several days. They will touch the same religious objects and sleep in crowded tent cities. Some, inevitably, will arrive carrying the new virus strain, H1N1.

Unable to alter these conditions, Saudi health officials have been working feverishly for months to minimize the risks. It has been a delicate balance between maintaining unrestricted movement for one of Islam’s holiest rites, and imposing measures to retard rampant transmission of the virus.

In June the World Health Organization declared swine flu, first detected in April, to be pandemic, meaning it had reached much of the world. As of Oct. 17, the WHO reported more than 414,000 cases and nearly 5,000 deaths from the disease.

By Nov. 2, Saudi Arabia had 62 deaths and about 5,000 cases of confirmed or suspected swine flu, according to Khaled Al Marghalani, spokesman for the Ministry of Health.

[Name removed]

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[Freddie Stubbs]

2. Of course not, since no observant Muslim would eat pork

;)

[kestrel91316]

3. If this does happen, they will of course blame the poor pigs.

[BolivarianHero]

4. Hopefully something "unfortunate" happens to the King...

Since he gave that fucking speech badmouthing atheists and secularism, my contempt has only grown for that stuck-up concubine-boinking asshole of a hypocrite.