The Ministry of Health (MOH) has reiterated the importance of applying its preventive and therapeutic health measures on arrivals for this year's Hajj, via land, sea and air ports. It continues to enforce strict measures and health requirements; in an endeavor to prevent the importation of any infectious diseases into the Kingdom, by means of obligating all preventive and precautionary preconditions prescribed by the MOH. These measures include examining all arrivals to ensure that they are in good health, checking their vaccination cards, and giving them all the required preventive therapy and necessary vaccines.
In this context, the MOH has completed its preparations, in coordination with the relevant authorities at Jeddah Islamic Port, to receive pilgrims arriving by sea. The preparations include providing the primary and preventive health care services and helping the early detection of epidemics or outbreaks for controlling them, by means of observing the arrivals (optical sorting) to ensure their safety, as well as reviewing the medical records of ship clinics to detect cases suspected to be infected with a communicable disease. The preparations also include following up the tasks of combating vector-borne diseases, which are assigned to specialized companies, checking the pesticides and the devices used in these tasks, and evaluating spraying works after completing, in addition to following the results of port insect surveillance.
The MOH has allocated preventive and therapeutic teams at Health Control Center of Jeddah Islamic Port (JIP), to obligate the health requirements on arrivals for Hajj and seasonal work upon their arrival at the ports and before disembarking from the ship, taking into account the accuracy of detecting the communicable diseases, the diseases that are subject to the international health regulations and the re-emerging ones, as well as referring suspected cases to a hospital in Jeddah.
The center is run by 97 employees including 18 doctors, who have been deployed to all locations of the center, in such a manner that ensures implementing therapeutic and preventive tasks efficiently, that is to be added to the relevant committees (equipment, follow-up, health awareness, environment health, and information and statistics).
It is worth mentioning that the Health Control Center of Jeddah Islamic Port is one of the health control centers at the Kingdom’s different land, sea and air ports, which have been prepared by the MOH to provide therapeutic and preventive services to the pilgrims coming to perform Hajj and to apply the health requirements for them on board, in an endeavor to ensure their safety and environmental status of the ship.
Furthermore, the medical clinic at the arrival terminal provides all primary healthcare services, including examining and treating pilgrims, sailors and workers at the port, by means of applying of a series of preventive and precautionary measures. Foremost among these measures is the detection of certain diseases such as cerebral meningitis, yellow fever and polio. Moreover, the MOH has taken strict measures to prevent the importation of Zika virus and curb the outbreak of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus (MERS-COV).