An international health expert said mass gatherings would not prove to be a health hazard if appropriate hygiene, awareness and education measures are taken.
Dr. Ali Khan of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, US, cited Haj as an example to prove his point. “The measures taken by the Saudi government annually resulted in a Haj season almost free of communicable and infectious diseases for years,” he said at a session on the second day of the International Mass Gathering Medicine Conference in Jeddah.
The expert warned that the easiest way for infections to spread in mass gathering situations is through polluted water and food, alongside respiratory infections, considered the most dangerous likely reason for the spread of diseases at such gatherings.
Khan said mass gatherings, however, could cause many diseases just discovered and hard and expensive to treat. “And most of these new diseases are resistant to the currently available vaccines. What makes it hard to control, especially in poor countries, is that these countries provide the right ground for proliferation,” he said. “So, it is extremely important to maintain public and private hygiene.”
Khan urged all countries to develop their capabilities in the early detection of diseases at their ports of entry by securing the right tools.
Another expert focused on tuberculosis as a typical mass gathering disease and warned that the number of infected people is currently estimated at 34 percent of the world population, though the rate varies from country to country.
Dr. Ibrahim Abu Bakr of the Health Protection Agency in London said that the low level of health services in many countries, besides the changing nature of the disease, contributes to the rise in numbers of people affected.
He stressed the importance of treating the disease, especially acute cases, as a major means of protection, while not ignoring the most important measure, which is avoiding infection in the first place.
Arab News