Agencies/Jeddah

Jeddah’s Haj airport terminal will have 20 thermal sensors to check pilgrims and 20% more specialist medical staff than last year

Saudi Arabia says it will use thermal cameras and have more medics on stand-by as part of measures to limit H1N1 flu during the Haj pilgrimage but does not expect to stop the spread of the virus completely.
Around 3mn pilgrims from more than 160 countries take part in the Haj in the holy city of Makkah most years, including up to 2mn who come from abroad. They mostly arrive by air in Jeddah.
On Monday, Saudi Arabia announced its first death from H1N1, a 30-year-old Saudi man in Dammam on the other side of the country. Saudi Arabia has reported nearly 300 cases.
“The World Health Organisation clearly said that the time for preventing the disease from entering into the country is gone,” said Ziad Memish, assistant deputy minister for preventative medicine at the ministry of health.
“So efforts should be focused on limiting the disease from spreading within the country i.e. social hygiene, wearing masks, etc.”
Arab health ministers agreed last week to try to prevent over-65s and under-12s from travelling to Saudi Arabia to take part in the pilgrimage.
Saudi Arabia has not said whether it will abide by the decision.
“This is currently pending with the higher authority for approval,” Memish said, referring to King Abdullah.
Jeddah’s Haj airport terminal will have 20 thermal sensors to check pilgrims and 20% more specialist medical staff than last year, Mohamed al-Harthi, health manager at Jeddah airport, said.
The team of 550 people will include doctors, nurses, lab technicians and pharmacists.
Saudi Arabia has increased its stock of the antiviral drug Tamiflu by 20%, double the WHO recommendation for other countries, and urged pilgrims to take seasonal vaccines as well as the new H1N1 vaccine once available in the coming months.
“The thermal cameras are not 100% effective. We know that 30 or 40% of the patients could be incubating and will pass by the camera and show symptoms a few days later,” Memish said. He said the sensors would stop up to 70% of the infected cases that could enter the country.
The health ministry will also set up health centres near the Jeddah and Madinah airports with capacity to house up to 500 patients who will be sent there for treatment during their incubation period of the infection, Memish said.
l Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday ordered health authorities to buy up swine flu vaccine for the country’s entire 7.5mn population, his office said.
The decision came at the end of a meeting with top health officials to discuss measures to tackle the H1N1 virus that has so far killed one person and infected thousands in Israel.
The prime minister’s office put the likely cost of the vaccine stock-up at some 450mn shekels ($115mn).
Pharmaceutical firms are racing to increase their capacity to produce an H1N1 vaccine, once tests confirm that one has been developed, and hope to begin releasing stocks in late September or early October.
The World Health Organisation has unofficially estimated that the world’s labs may only be able to produce around 900mn doses for the H1N1 strain per year, for a planet that is home to 6.8bn people.
Global pharmaceutical companies are more optimistic about how much of the drug they can produce but, since each potential victim needs two doses, most of the world’s population will inevitably miss out.
“The lion’s share of these limited supplies will go to wealthy countries,” WHO director Margaret Chan warned last week.
A senior Israeli health ministry official has warned that one quarter of the Israeli population, or about 1.85mn people, could catch swine flu in the next few months.