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| Tunisia pulls out of Hajj ‘09 |
| Written by Abdulkadir Badsha Mukhtar |
| Wednesday, 07 October 2009 02:24 |
 Three weeks to the commencement of pilgrims’ airlift to Saudi Arabia for this year’s hajj, the North African nation of Tunisia yesterday decided not to allow its citizens to perform the annual pilgrimage due to uncertainty over the supply of swine flu vaccines.
Reuters news agency quoted the Tunisian Minister of Religious Affairs as saying “a batch of H1N1 flu jabs would not arrive before mid-October, too late to ensure candidates for the pilgrimage are vaccinated.” However, a spokesperson of the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON) Uba Mana said there is no going back from the hajj on Nigeria’s side, saying Nigerians have nothing to worry about as the commission has already requested for the vaccines and they would be enough for pilgrims before the commencement of the airlift. “We ordered for the vaccine through the Ministry of Health, and we are sure that it will be available before the airlift of intending pilgrims begins. There is nothing to fear,” he said. The Saudi Arabian government on its part stated that it is prepared for the swine flu during the hajj, saying it is preparing is to welcome more than three million pilgrims. Ziad Bin Ahmed Memish of the Saudi health ministry said in the Moroccan city of Fez that despite the level of alert on the Swine flu virus, “Saudi Arabia has decided to hold the great gathering in Mecca and Medina.” “We currently have in our possession more than four million doses of vaccine and our hospitals are well equipped to handle swine flu,” he said. He said Saudi Arabia had been put to the swine flu test at the umrah during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in August-September. “We only had 26 cases of infections among two million pilgrims,” he said. During the lesser Hajj, Iran had taken similar action when it banned its pilgrims from going to Saudi Arabia because of Swine flu. In Egypt too, “Fifteen percent of passengers who arrived on Monday at Cairo airport to travel to Saudi Arabia on pilgrimage were prevented from leaving,” the official said. Some two million foreigners and possibly as many Saudis are expected to descend on Mecca and Medina for the hajj, which takes place in the middle of the northern hemisphere’s winter flu season. Saudi Arabia has to date reported 9,000 cases of swine flu and 35 deaths from the disease, one of the highest levels of contamination in the Arab world, officials said. Several Muslim countries have sought to limit numbers travelling to Mecca but Tunisia is the first to formally cancel the pilgrimage. |