Viral respiratory infections including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) have been reported during the Hajj among international pilgrims. To help establish the burden of these infections at the Hajj, we set up a study to confirm these diagnoses in symptomatic British pilgrims who attended the 2005 Hajj. UK pilgrims with symptoms of upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) were inv...

This year the Hajj will take place during 24-29 October. Recent outbreaks of Ebola haemorrhagic fever in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, cholera in Sierra Leone, and infections associated with a novel coronavirus in Saudi Arabia and Qatar required review of the health recommendations of the 2012 Hajj. Current guidelines foresee mandatory vaccination with quadrivalent meningococ...

BACKGROUND About two million people annually travel to Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to perform Hajj. The pilgrims may be at risk of exposure to communicable diseases in this mass gathering and their vaccination against contagious diseases can prevent many morbidities and mortalities. The aim of our study was to review the papers which evaluated effectiveness and compliance of the vaccines applied in...

introduction: the pilgrimage to ka’beh (god’s house in mecca) is a special opportunity in the life of most muslims. female pilgrims try to postpone menstruation during the pilgrimage by taking hormonal medicines. however, women are seen in this disorder. this paper aimed to determine the frequency of menstrual disorders and related factors among female pilgrims of umrah mufradah in 2012.methods...

In this work, we define a new pilgrims face recognition and face detection dataset, called Hajj and Umrah facial dataset. The new developed dataset presents various pilgrims’ images taken from outside the Holy Masjid El-Harram in Makkah during the 2011-2012 Hajj and Umrah seasons. Such dataset will be used to test our developed facial recognition and detection algorithms, as well as in the miss...

UNLABELLED Background Respiratory diseases/syndromes are the most common causes of referring to physicians among pilgrims in Hajj. They lead to high morbidity, impose high costs on the health system and are among the major obstacles for pilgrims to perform Hajj duties. The main aim of our study was to determine types, frequencies, etiologies, and epidemiologic factors of respiratory diseases am...

Crowd simulation is an exciting research area that has a wide range of applications in multiple fields such as: serious games, crowd management, facilities design, entertainment, research and development. One of the most famous approaches to simulate a large density crowd is by applying the social force model. This model can be successfully used to simulate agents’ movement in real-world scenar...

Introduction: Extreme heat claims more lives than all other weather-related exposures combined. Hajj rituals at Mina, Arafat, and Muzdalifah involve a minimally-clothed, moving assemblage of 3.5 million pilgrims who are exposed to a harsh, hot, desert climate during physically challenging outdoor rituals and unsheltered night stays, rendering them prone to heat illness, dehydra...

Saudi Arabia (SA) experienced two large invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) outbreaks during the 2000 and 2001 Hajj pilgrimages. In 2002, polysaccharide quadrivalent ACWY vaccines became mandatory for Mecca and Medina pilgrims/residents older than two years. This study aimed to analyse IMD surveillance data among citizens, residents and pilgrims in SA from 1995 to 2011, focusing on changes bef...

BACKGROUND Every year more than 2 million people depart from Iran to Saudi Arabia for Hajj ritual whichcan be faced with some different diseases. There are not much information about frequencies and trend of diseasesin Hajj. The main objective of this study was to determine the trend of prevalent diseases during five consecutiveHajj rituals among Iranian pilgrims. METHODS We established a spe...