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...

BACKGROUND Annually millions of Muslims depart to Saudi Arabia for performing a religious pilgrimage called "Hajj". In this ceremony, pilgrims face numerous health hazards and injuries such as pressing in overcrowding, sliding, burning, falling down, traffic accidents etc. The main purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of injuries in Hajj period across 2004 to 2008. METHODS Th...

Mass gatherings of people challenge public health capacities at host locations and the visitors' places of origin. Hajj--the yearly pilgrimage by Muslims to Saudi Arabia--is one of the largest, most culturally and geographically diverse mass gatherings in the world. With the 2009 pandemic influenza A H1N1 and upcoming Hajj, the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health (MoH) convened a preparedness cons...

OBJECTIVE The diseases that occur during Hajj are a unique medical problem. The aim of this study is to highlight the incidence, the type and the early surgical management of trauma during the Hajj period. METHODS A prospective study was carried out during a 15 day-period conducted in two parts in the emergency room, and a follow-up of the admitted patients in the surgical department. RESUL...

We are all familiar with the growth rate of the public Web. Regardless of the metric used to measure its growth attached networks, servers, users or pages the growth rate continues to exhibit an exponential pattern. In the same vein, the adoption rate of intranet and extranet data warehouses (i.e., Web warehouses) has exhibited a similar pattern, although the pattern has lagged public adoption....

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...

Hajj is the most important one of Five Pillars in Islam. Islam makes Kaaba as orientation daily prayers (salat), and hajj linkage to maintain global Muslim faith community. The sanctity rituals positive significance for pilgrims transcend boundaries countries ethnic groups. In era globalization, quota has long been a scarce resource. It difficult Muslims obtain permits from Saudi Arabia short t...

Each year more than 2 million people from all over the world attend the Hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. At least 60% of them develop respiratory symptoms there or during outward or homebound transit [1, 2]. During recent interpandemic years, approximately 1 in 10 pilgrims with respiratory symptoms in Makkah have had influenza detected by polymerase chain reaction tests of respiratory samples [...

OBJECTIVE To document the pattern of medical diseases necessitating admission in a tertiary care hospital during Muslim pilgrimage (Hajj). To assess the risk factors associated with mortality during hospitalization. METHODS The study was conducted at Al Noor Specialist Hospital, a 550-bed tertiary care teaching hospital, in Makkah, KSA. The participants included all Hajj patients admitted in ...

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...