GENEVA

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Monday a digital health collaboration with Saudi Arabia on the Hajj health card initiative, which aims to support the approximately 3 million Muslims who travel to the holy city of Mecca each year.

The Hajj health card, a new digital health tool built on the WHO Global Digital Health Certification Network, uses public key infrastructure to securely summarize critical health information, including pilgrims' medication needs, allergies, immunization status, and pre-existing conditions, the UN agency said in a statement.

Travelers can share their health information with authorized medical providers, ensuring access to accurate, up-to-date patient summaries and aiming to facilitate personalized and high-quality health care during the Hajj pilgrimage, it said.

"Today marks a notable progress in WHO’s support to Member States to expand access to safer and person-centered digital health tools for people to improve their access to quality health care when and where they need it," WHO Chief Scientist Jeremy Farrar said in the statement.

"We are thankful for the excellent collaboration with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, participating countries, and the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, and look forward to further support building capacity and infrastructure in countries shifting to more digitized health systems," Farrar added.

The Hajj is "the largest pilgrimage" in the world, drawing almost 3 million Muslims from over 180 countries every year to perform Islamic rituals in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, WHO underlined, adding that the test phase undertaken in 2024 showed that the practice improved pilgrims' safety and quality of care while performing the Hajj.