An outbreak of serogroup W-135 meningococcal disease was reported among pilgrims returning from the annual hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) in mid-March 2000. Molecular characterization was used to investigate the similarity of the hajj-associated W-135 strains with those isolated in Sweden during a 23-year period (1978 to 2000). The same hajj-associated genosubtype, genosubtype P1.5,2,36b, has been ...

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...

BACKGROUND The objective of this study was to assess the compliance of health care workers (HCWs) employed in Hajj in receiving the meningococcal, influenza, and hepatitis B vaccines. METHODS A cross-sectional survey of doctors and nurses working in all Mena and Arafat hospitals and primary health care centers who attended Hajj-medicine training programs immediately before the beginning of Ha...

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...

Hajj, which brings more than 2 million Muslims together, represents a special challenge for healthcare services especially the intensive care unit. The main goal for healthcare providers is to provide the best service to the largest number of patients with the available resources. The purpose of this article is to outline the admission criteria from the emergency room to the intensive care and ...

In this paper, a system for facial recognition to identify missing and found people in Hajj and Umrah is described as a web portal. Explicitly, we present a novel algorithm for recognition and classifications of facial images based on applying 2DPCA to a 2D representation of the Histogram of oriented gradients (2D-HOG) which maintains the spatial relation between pixels of the input images. Thi...

background: every year more than 2 million people depart from iran to saudi arabia for hajj ritual which can be faced with some different diseases. there are not much information about frequencies and trend of diseases in hajj. the main objective of this study was to determine the trend of prevalent diseases during five consecutive hajj rituals among iranian pilgrims. methods: we established a ...

We document the absence of carriage of Neisseria meningitidis W-135 of the sequence type 11 in returning pilgrims after the Hajj 2002. This finding contrasts with the 15% carriage rate we previously reported in pilgrims returning from the Hajj 2001. The epidemiology of carriage may be changing or may have been controlled by vaccination and a policy of administering antibiotics to pilgrims from ...

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...