Invasive meningococcal disease is a recognized public health problem worldwide, with a dynamic and changeable epidemiology. In Turkey, the second most common pathogenic meningococcal serogroup (after serogroup B) is W-135, including an epidemic in 2005, which has been strongly associated with Hajj pilgrims and their close contacts. In two studies conducted in 2010, we assessed meningococcal car...

BACKGROUND Some Iranian pilgrims are referred to Iran because of catching a new disease or exacerbation of their disease during the Hajj ceremony. These diseases need prolonged and specialized treatments. Investigation of the reasons led to their return to Iran is useful and effective in policy-making and planning of preventive health services. OBJECTIVES This study aimed to investigate the c...

The Hajj os Calculus is a simple, nondeterministic procedure which generates the class of non-3-colorable graphs. Mansseld and Welsch MW] posed the question of whether there exist graphs which require exponential-sized Hajj os constructions. Unless NP 6 = coNP, there must exist graphs which require exponential-sized constructions, but to date, little progress has been made on this question, des...

Hajj is a unique gathering of its kind and poses a challenge to its organisers. Recently many types of identification and sensor devices, including RFID tags, have been developed. Such technologies, together with the use of database systems, can be extremely useful in improving the Hajj management. Sensor devices can be used to track movements of individuals during the Hajj period. Various type...

BACKGROUND Pneumonia is a leading cause of hospitalization during Hajj and susceptibility and transmission may be exacerbated by extreme spatial and temporal crowding. We describe the number and temporal onset, co-morbidities, and outcomes of severe pneumonia causing critical illness among pilgrims. METHOD A cohort study of all critically ill Hajj patients, of over 40 nationalities, admitted ...

Pilgrims returning from the Hajj might contribute to international spreading of respiratory pathogens. Nasal and throat swab specimens were obtained from 129 pilgrims in 2013 before they departed from France and before they left Saudi Arabia, and tested by PCR for respiratory viruses and bacteria. Overall, 21.5% and 38.8% of pre-Hajj and post-Hajj specimens, respectively, were positive for ≥1 v...

Context: The pilgrimage occurs from the 8th to 12th or 13th of Dhu al-Hijjah, the last month of the Islamic calendar, with a population of more than 2 million pilgrims in Mecca. Muslims have a series of verdicts in an appealing scenario such as Abraham the prophet. The Hajj pilgrimage is one of the most important verdicts in not only Islam but also all of the Abrahamian religions. Hajj is the 2...

The Hajj has become the epicenter of mass migration of millions of Muslims of enormous ethnic diversity. No other mass gathering can compare, either in scale or in regularity. Communicable disease outbreaks of various infectious diseases have been reported repeatedly, during and following the Hajj. The Hajj 2010 starts in the first week of November 2010 and this report is a timely reminder that...

BACKGROUND Every year millions of pilgrims from around the world gather under extremely crowded conditions in Mecca, Saudi Arabia to perform the Hajj. In 2009, the Hajj coincided with influenza season during the midst of an influenza A (H1N1) pandemic. After the Hajj, resource-limited countries with large numbers of traveling pilgrims could be vulnerable, given their limited ability to purchase...

In this paper, a new automatic system for classifying ritual locations in diverse Hajj and Umrah video scenes is investigated. This challenging subject has mostly been ignored in the past due to several problems one of which is the lack of realistic annotated video datasets. HUER Dataset is defined to model six different Hajj and Umrah ritual locations [26]. The proposed Hajj and Umrah ritual l...