"With so many people from so many places crammed together in the heat, exhaustion, dehydration and infections are common. Saudi Arabia is struggling to put an end to Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, a deadly virus. The government has set up 25 hospitals nearby; the Red Crescent will run 69 medical centres.
The logistics will only get harder. The Saudi government is spending billions of dollars on expanding the holy sites’ capacity (luckily the haj makes the country some $8.5 billion each year, by one estimate). The Grand Mosque will soon be able to accommodate 1.6m pilgrims at once: extra floors, 21,000 toilets and hundreds of escalators and lifts are being built." This reads like the glossy brochures of the Saudi embassy.
