Meningococcal meningitis vaccination

The Ministry of Health wanted to verify the vaccination coverage in 1416 H for meningococcal meningitis (MCM) in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the policy to protect pilgrims from MCM which had been implemented in the past few years. The group of pilgrims who were interviewed about wristbands were also asked about their MCM vaccination status. The coverage was 98.5% among the 400 pilgrims interviewed.

Only six of the pilgrims interviewed were not vaccinated, four of them due to time constraints. The main source of information about MCM vaccination was the press (45%) for pilgrims coming from inside Saudi Arabia (SA) and Hajj department (51%) for those coming from outside SA.