Heat-related deaths during the Hajj in Saudi Arabia underscore the climate threat to pilgrims

Neither Egypt nor Saudi Arabia have released official death tolls from this year’s hajj, which is usually a source of prestige for the Saudi government. Saudi authorities said around 1.8 million pilgrims made the journey, which is one of the five fundamental principles of Islam.

Every able-bodied Muslim must perform the hajj once in their lifetime. Many of the rituals involve prolonged outdoor stays and long walks. The hajj can also be expensive, and Saudi Arabia only issues a certain number of pilgrim visas each year, with quotas for each Muslim-majority country. Hundreds of thousands of people who fail to obtain permits are still able to participate, often on tourist visas arranged by unlicensed tour operators.

With temperatures rising around the world, including in the desert kingdom, and a two-tier system that prevents many pilgrims from accessing facilities or services, the pilgrimage could become increasingly risky. And the Saudi government faces growing criticism for its role as host of one of the world’s largest religious gatherings.

Over the past four decades, temperatures in Saudi Arabia have warmed 50 percent faster than the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, according to a study published in 2021 by the American Meteorological Society. If this trend continues, “human survival in the region will be impossible without continued access to air conditioning,” the study says.

Another study, published in 2019 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, said climate change would increase heat stress on Hajj pilgrims in 2047-52 and 2079-86 to levels that exceed the “threshold of extreme danger,” “with increasing frequency and intensity throughout the century.”

People who took part in the hajj this year described the oppressive heat that was impossible to escape even in air-conditioned rooms. Pilgrims seeking shelter crowded into already crowded mosques or splashed water on each other to cool off. Some collapsed on the road or died after walking for miles in the desert sun.

Witnesses reported that in some cases, unregistered pilgrims were denied access to air-conditioned tents and other official cooling centers where pilgrims with a hajj permit could escape the high temperatures. Even when some people were visibly ill, authorities refused to help them, pilgrims reported. In some cases, the unregistered pilgrims themselves refused medical attention for fear of reprisals from the Saudi authorities.

At one point, the generators that powered the air conditioners in the tents stopped working because of the heat, said Ahmad Bahaa, 37, an Egyptian pilgrim who lives in Saudi Arabia.

“I told my friend, ‘I can’t breathe and I feel like I’m getting sunstroke sitting in the tent. I don’t know where to go,'” he said.

Authorities urged people to stay in their homes due to the sweltering heat, but “almost all those on the streets were undocumented pilgrims,” ​​he said, adding that their situation was “heartbreaking.”

According to Syam Resfiadi, chairman of the Indonesian Association of Hajj and Umrah Organisers, Saudi police cracked down on unregistered pilgrims before the start of the hajj, raiding guesthouses and hotels and arresting hundreds of people without the required papers, Resfiadi said.

But many pilgrims, most of them from low-income countries, are often duped by brokers or travel agents posing as official Hajj tour operators. They pay money for what they believe to be an all-inclusive trip, only to find that no assistance is available to them.

The Egyptian government said on Saturday that it was revoking the licenses of 16 tourism companies that had facilitated travel for unregistered pilgrims and referring the owners and managers to the public prosecutor’s office.

A large proportion of pilgrims are also elderly, some of whom use all their savings to perform the Hajj before they die. They are also much more vulnerable to the heat.

Mohamed Fadl, 28, is an Egyptian pharmacist. He said his aunt, 70-year-old Kareema Abdelrahman Hussein, who raised him as her own son, died last week while taking part in the hajj as an unregistered pilgrim. An elder from her village in Sharqiya, northern Egypt, persuaded his aunt to join a group of about 30 pilgrims he took to Saudi Arabia on tourist visas, saying the experience was no different from making the journey with the appropriate permits.

“She was a simple woman, illiterate,” Fadl said, adding that they had argued before she left because he did not want her to leave without an official visa.

When the group arrived in Mecca, things went downhill almost immediately. The village elder who had organized the trip disappeared, and Hussein soon discovered that he had grossly overcharged her for the hotel where she was staying. A bus that was supposed to take them to Mount Arafat, about 12 miles outside of Mecca, never arrived.

The trip to Mount Arafat, where the Prophet Mohammed is said to have given his last speech, is the spiritual climax of the Hajj pilgrimage. Believers gather on the holy mountain to ask God for mercy and forgiveness. There is little or no shade.

According to Fadl, his aunt was walking back to Mecca from Arafat when she met a doctor and said she was in pain and had difficulty breathing. Nearby medical staff arranged for her to be taken to King Faisal Hospital in Mecca, but she died on the way.

For those who die during the Hajj, the Saudi authorities arrange their funeral in Mecca unless their families request that the bodies be repatriated.

“I insisted that she is not dead and we need to make sure,” Fadl said. As he browsed the news, he noticed that “many people were missing and others were posting photos of their missing family members.”

The annual gathering has seen tragic, fatal incidents in the past, often related to the sheer size of the crowds. In 2015, more than 2,000 people were killed in a stampede during the pilgrimage.

But on Tuesday, as reports of heat-related deaths emerged, Saudi Health Minister Fahad al-Jalajel released a statement praising the “success of this year’s health plans for Hajj.”

“Despite the large number of pilgrims and the challenges posed by high temperatures, there were no outbreaks or public health threats,” Jalajel said.

The Saudi government has made some efforts in recent years, including in the run-up to this month’s pilgrimage, to reduce heat stress on pilgrims, but researchers say these measures have not always been effective.

Earlier this month, Saudi authorities said they had added a “surface cooling layer” to the asphalt around the Namira Mosque near Mount Arafat. The layer is designed to better reflect sunlight and reduce surface temperatures by around 20 degrees Celsius, creating “a more comfortable environment” for pedestrians, authorities said.

Satellite images confirmed that areas near the mosque were covered with a lighter layer starting in May, but a large stretch of road that begins at the northeastern edge of the mosque was uncovered before the start of the hajj. Videos and satellite images taken in recent days – including on June 15, when crowds crowded the mosque and surrounding streets – showed masses of pilgrims on foot near the mosque, even in the uncovered areas.

But while reflective coatings may lower the temperature of asphalt, they have limited impact on the air temperature felt by pedestrians, says Ariane Middel, a professor at Arizona State University who focuses on urban landscaping and infrastructure in the face of extreme heat.

“If you want to keep pilgrims cool, increasing the reflectivity of the roads doesn’t help,” she said. “That doesn’t reduce the heat load on the human body, which is what you want to achieve if you want to keep people cool.”

Middel said shade along pilgrimage routes was a more effective way to keep people cool outdoors, citing Saudi Arabia’s efforts to plant trees, provide water and umbrellas, and install misting systems.

“As temperatures rise, they need to step up their efforts because more and more people need these cooling measures to avoid developing heat-related illnesses or dying – especially older people who are more vulnerable to heat,” she said.

Mahfouz reported from Cairo and Oakford from New York.