From: Kehinde Aderemi, Saudi Arabia

Two Nigerian pilgrims delivered new babies while perfuming this year’s pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.

Sadly, however, 14 Nigerians were reported dead during the just concluded hajj in the holy land.

The female pilgrims are from Sokoto and Kogi states. The dead included a  member of staff and legal adviser  to the National Hajj Commission ( NAHCON),  identified as Ahmed  Idris, who travelled alongside his wife but eventually died after a brief illness shortly after performing all the hajj rites.

Head of the team in charge of health matters in the commission, Dr. Ibrahim Kana, made this known during a stakeholders’ meeting in Mecca at the 2017 hajj post Arafat meeting with stakeholders. According to him, members of the medical committee would visit all hospitals in Saudi Arabia and take care of all Nigerian patients on admission, while all unidentified and missing pilgrims would also be ascertained.

  Kana projected and cautioned that within the next 10 years, Nigerians would operate hajj during a dry season and hot weather, hence the need for unhealthy persons or the aged  to avoid performing the pilgrimage, except if it is expedient. Such pilgrims, he advised, should be accompanied by able-bodied persons from home.

He added that the commission would adopt a system where the operations of all ambulances would be centralised for proper coordination.