The Nigerian Medical Mission to Saudi Arabia for this year’s hajj has recommended sanctions against states with high numbers of advanced pregnant women approved as pilgrims.
The mission was constituted by the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON) to provide quality healthcare services to Nigerian pilgrims in Saudi Arabia throughout the Hajj period.
Its Chief of Operations and Head of the Mission, Dr. Usman Galadima told the News Agency of Nigeria on Tuesday in Makkah that the mission had recorded cases of expectant mothers participating in pilgrimage in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, despite sustained efforts and awareness to prevent them from going for hajj.
He said a Nigerian pilgrim had delivered a seven-month-old baby through cesarean section in Madina.
Galadima added that there were other cases of miscarriages which could have been prevented if the affected women had registered for antenatal at the mission’s clinic.
He called for a strong commitment from all hajj stakeholders to curtail the rate of expectant mothers approved for pilgrimage.
According to him, any woman that wants to come on pilgrimage should plan well including avoidance of getting pregnant.
He said: “What I will advise is that probably if some punitive measures can be established or be carried out against erring states or states with certain number of advanced pregnancies that were obvious to everybody.
“Probably that will curtail the surge that we are seeing now. So, I think it requires commitment on the side of all the stakeholders.”
Galadima recalled that during his medical team’s pre-hajj programmes, screening for prospective pilgrims in all the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory were done.
According to him, the medical screening, which included pregnancy tests, were conducted by state nominees or members of the medical team that were from the states.
He added: “Even among the staffers of NAHCON, pregnancy tests were done on each and every one of them and members of the medical team.
“So, NAHCON has zero tolerance for this. However, we still find them here now. Some are not aware or do not know that they are pregnant, but some obviously concealed these pregnancies.
“It is curious to note that someone with advanced pregnancy missed all the screening”.
Galadima said combining pregnancy and the rigours of hajj was very difficult, adding that the woman runs a risk of losing the pregnancy and putting her life at risk.
He added: “However, what we want to appeal now is that those that are pregnant, if actually they are aware, should come to the hospital and register.
“We will carry out antenatal services for them. This is because we have specialists, such as gynaecologists and obstetricians, among us.
“So, we can look after them, look after their pregnancy and tell them the lifestyle to adopt and how to prevent loss of pregnancy.”
Galadima also said the medical team had attended to over 11,000 pilgrims with different illnesses.
“We have sufficient drugs and we are not getting so much complains. However, we have registered two mortalities.
“We had two deaths – one male and one female. That of the female occurred on Monday evening and that of the male a few days ago.
“We have a total of 534 members of the Nigerian medical team out of which 222 are doctors and almost about 200 nurses as well.
“We have 93 pharmacists and about 27 community health officers.
“This is the highest number of medical professionals that we had to bring to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This is because of the large contingent of Nigerian pilgrims which is about 95,000″, he added.
