Hajj seems like a great event.  Not primitive whatsoever. 

Incidents during the Hajj

There have been many serious incidents during the Hajj (the Muslim pilgrimage to the city of Mecca) that in total have caused the loss of thousands of lives. Every follower of Islam is required to visit Mecca during the Hajj at least once in his or her lifetime, but only if they can afford or are able to do so. During the month of the Hajj, Mecca must cope with as many as four million pilgrims.^[1]

Jet travel makes Mecca and the Hajj more accessible to pilgrims from all over the world. As a consequence, the Hajj has become increasingly crowded. City officials are required to control large crowds and provide food, shelter, sanitation, and emergency services for millions. Unfortunately, they have not always been able to prevent disasters. The stoning of the devil ritual is the most dangerous part of the pilgrimage because of the huge crowds, particularly as they cross the massive two-layer flyover-style Jamarat Bridge that affords access to the pillars.

Stampedes and failures of crowd control

Sometimes the surging crowds, trekking from one station of the pilgrimage to the next, cause a stampede. Panic spreads, pilgrims jostle to avoid being trampled, and hundreds of deaths can occur as a result. The stoning of the devil ceremony is particularly crowded and dangerous. Some notable incidents include:

• July 2, 1990 : A stampede inside a pedestrian tunnel (Al-Ma'aisim tunnel) leading out from Mecca towards Mina, Saudi Arabia and the Plains of Arafat led to the deaths of 1,426 pilgrims, many of them Malaysian, Indonesian and Pakistani of origin.^[2][3]
• May 23, 1994 : A stampede killed at least 270 pilgrims at the stoning of the Devil ritual.
• April 9, 1998: at least 118 pilgrims were trampled to death and 180 injured in an incident on Jamarat Bridge.^[4]
• March 5, 2001: Thirty five pilgrims were trampled to death in a stampede during the stoning of the Devil ritual.^[5]
• February 11, 2003: The stoning of the Devil ritual claimed 14 pilgrims' lives.^[6]
• February 1, 2004: 251 pilgrims were killed and another 244 injured in a stampede during the stoning ritual in Mina.^[7]
• January 12, 2006: A stampede during the ritual ramy al-jamarāt on the last day of the Hajj in Mina killed at least 346 pilgrims and injured at least 289 more. The incident occurred shortly after 13:00 local time, when a busload of travellers arrived together at the eastern access ramps to the Jamarat Bridge. This caused pilgrims to trip, rapidly resulting in a lethal crush. An estimated two million people were performing the ritual at the time.

Disease

Mingling of visitors from many countries, some of which have poor health care systems still plagued by preventable infectious diseases, can lead to the spread of epidemics. If an outbreak were to occur on the road to Mecca, pilgrims could exacerbate the problem when they returned home and passed their infection on to others. This was more of a problem in the past. One such disease, which has prompted response from the Saudi government, is meningitis as it became a primary concern after an international outbreak following the Hajj in 1987. Due to post-Hajj outbreaks globally of certain types of meningitis in previous years, it is now a visa requirement to be immunised with the ACW135Y vaccine before arrival. Every year, the Saudi government publishes a list of required vaccines for pilgrims, which for 2010 also includes yellow fever, polio, and influenza.^[10] As of 9 September 2013, the Saudi government asked "elderly and chronically ill Muslims to avoid the hajj this year" and have restricted the numbers of people allowed into the country due to Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus.^[11]

Historical outbreaks

• The El Tor strain of cholera was discovered in six pilgrims returning from hajj at the El-Tor quarantine camp in Egypt, in 1905.