Publishing the first edition of the Southern Med Review (SMR) was a milestone and the SMR is going from strength to strength. We gratefully appreciate the support we have received from Pharmacy World and Science (PWS) who invited us to write an editorial about the SMR. Most of all though, thanks goes to you, the contributors, readers and the members of the SMR Advisory Board for providing a ste...

The transformations broadly grouped under the term Arab Spring have shaken the foundations of a variety of Middle East regimes. This POLICY BRIEF provides an overview of different cases where changes of and within the regime have taken place, as well as yet unsolved situations, with a view to the upcoming Middle East Conference. Although the lack of progress in the PalestinianIsraeli conflict a...

HIV-1 incidence has been increasing more rapidly in the Middle East and North Africa than in any other global region. Despite this trend, HIV epidemiology in the region remains poorly defined. We conducted an analysis of 3284 publicly available HIV-1 sequences from 15 countries in the Middle East and North Africa to better characterize the regional epidemic. A phylogenetic tree based on the rev...

This study investigates the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow and trade openness on the expansion of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for the period of 1996 to 2005, in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions. Asia-Pacific countries cited in this study are: China (mainland & Hong Kong), Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The Middl...

BACKGROUND Healthcare workers (HCWs) pose a potential risk of transmitting communicable diseases in the hospital settings where they usually work. This study aims to determine the current influenza vaccination rates among HCWs in three Middle East countries namely United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait and Oman, and also to identify the different variables associated with the noncompliance of HCWs ...

BACKGROUND There is a dire need in the Arab world and Middle Eastern countries to reform the higher education, research policy and planning for improving the quality to meet the needs of modern society. The impact factor (IF) was developed in the 1960s by Eugene Garfield of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) in the USA. It has been extensively used for more than 40 years. The SCImag...