Syed Majid Hamid, Muhammad Irfanullah Siddiqui, Sohail Akhtar, Qutub Muhammad Raef, Muhammad Khalid, Fahad Khan, Samreen Hashmi.
Efficacy of Flu Vaccine among Hajj Pilgrims.
Pak J Chest Med Jan ;21(3):96-9.

Millions of people travel every year to Makkah to perform hajj, the pilgrimage of Muslims across the world. Overcrowding and congested living conditions make most of the pilgrims vulnerable to infectious diseases, especially airborne infection like influenza. During 2013 hajj more than 100,000 pilgrims performed hajj from Pakistan, and it was mandatory for all travelers that, they should be vaccinated for Influenza, apart from Meningitis and Polio. Objective of this cross sectional study was to assess the effectiveness of flu vaccine among Pakistani pilgrims. One hundred and seventy six pilgrims (127 male and 47 female) were selected by using convenient sampling technique. All of them were interviewed by a team of doctors and volunteers. Out of 170, 94.9% were vaccinated against influenza while 5.1% were not vaccinated or not aware about vaccination. All those vaccinated received monovalent H N rather than 1 1 recommended trivalent (TIV) vaccine for high risk groups. Within 4-6 week, after receiving vaccine, 27.87% had developed influenza as diagnosed by preset clinical criteria. We strongly recommend a large scale study for efficacy of influenza vaccine with availability of PCR for influenza virus and long term follow up.

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