Pilgrims’ perils: 1,500 devotees fall ill during urs

Hundreds fall sick during urs celebrations at the Bahauddin Zakariya shrine due to contaminated food.

MULTAN: Over 1,500 pilgrims at the urs of Bahauddin Zakariya have fallen ill over the past two days.

Health Department official Dr Khalil Ahmed Rao, who has been supervising medical facilities for the pilgrims, said the district government had made elaborate arrangements for the welfare of the pilgrims. “Thousands of people have come to attend the urs festivities and the district administration and Health Department have made elaborate arrangements in this regard,” he said.

“The food we received was contaminated. We all got plates of rice and daal and a few moments later hundreds were throwing up,” said a devotee, Raza Asif.

Pilgrims in Multan complained of the bitter cold and added that no heating arrangements had been made at the shrine. “We weren’t expecting anything elaborate but there wasn’t even any firewood available to us,” said a devotee from Dera Ghazi Khan, Aarifa. Hundreds of cases of pneumonia have been reported in Multan and the largest number of victims included children and the elderly.

“We are scared that the figures could increase. The number of patients could easily rise up to 4,000 because there were over 6,000 people attending the urs,” said Nishtar Hospital Dr Qazim.

Dr Khalil said that many of the patients had been suffering from food poisoning and that the Health Department was struggling to provide maximum medical facilities for all the patients.

Devotees arrived in Multan from different parts of the country and said that there had been a scarcity of medical facilities at the urs and locals had been given substandard food. “Everyone was provided free meals and everyone seems to have gotten food poisoning,” said Nadeem, a devotee who lives at the shrine.

Auqaf district administrator Arif Zia told The Express Tribune that they had arranged the residence and other arrangements for all visitors arriving at the shrine from different parts of the country in the hajj complex. “We have vacated all the schools in the area to arrange for the accommodation of all the devotees,” he said. Zia denied all claims of people falling sick during the urs ceremony and said that all the devotees had received ‘five-star’ treatment.

However, devotees at the urs claimed that they have been left to stay in the schools without blankets or heaters. “We have been sleeping in the cold and been served tainted food,” said Fazeelat, adding that hundreds of pilgrims had been sleeping outside on the grass and nearly all of them had fallen sick. The devotees said that nearly 70 per cent of the pilgrims were sick and most of the affected people included children and the elderly.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 12^th, 2011.