For the past few decades, the Eastern Mediterranean Region has been one area of the world profoundly shaped by war and political instability. On-going conflict and destruction have left the region struggling with innumerable health concerns that have claimed the lives of many. Wars, and the chaos they leave behind, often provide the optimal conditions for the growth and re-emergence of communic...

The celebration in Doha of the 30th anniversary of the Alma-Ata Declaration at the International Conference on Primary Health Care renewed the commitment of the Eastern Mediterranean Region to primary health care as the tool for better health. The principles agreed at Alma-Ata in 1978 apply as much now as they did before. The event provided an opportunity for the Eastern Mediterranean countries...

In 2012, the World Health Assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the completion of polio eradication a programmatic emergency. Indigenous wild poliovirus (WPV) transmission remains uninterrupted in Nigeria (in the WHO African Region [AFR]) and in Afghanistan and Pakistan (in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region [EMR]). In the WHO AFR, multiple WPV outbreaks have occurred since...

Future climate projections show higher/lower winter (Dec-Jan-Feb) precipitation in the northern/southern Mediterranean region than in present climate conditions. This paper analyzes the results of regional model simulations of the A2 and B2 scenarios, which confirm this opposite precipitation change and link it to the change of cyclone activity. The increase of the winter cyclone activity in fu...

Objectives: To synthesize the prevalence of mental and substance use disorders in countries Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) World Health Organization. Methods: The literature search was conducted across several databases two phases. First, we searched for systematic reviews and/or meta-analyses published before 2014, reporting estimates EMR. Then, identified new primary cross-sectional or lo...

BACKGROUND Determinants of health or health production function in health economics literature constitute noticeable issues in health promotion. This study aimed at estimating a health production function for East Mediterranean Region (EMR) based on the Grossman theoretical model. METHODS This ecological study was performed using the econometric methods. The panel data model was used in order...

Background: The preexistence of obesity with nutritional anaemia is becoming an increasing problem in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR). Much controversy exists around the role of continued breastfeeding in alleviating the health and survival consequences of these problems in the region. Aim: To examine trends and relationships of nutritional anaemia (NA) in women and children underfive ye...

[1] Using observational datasets and atmospheric reanalyses, we show that interannual variability of rainfall in the Euro-Mediterranean sector is significantly influenced by ENSO in a way that is seasonally varying. Spatially coherent correlation patterns are found in central and eastern Europe during winter and spring, and in western Europe and the Mediterranean region during autumn and spring...

Genetic variation was surveyed at nine microsatellite loci and the mitochondrial control region (868 bp) to test for the presence of genetic stock structure in young-of-the-year Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus thynnus) from the Mediterranean Sea. Bluefin tuna were sampled over a period of 5 years from the Balearic and Tyrrhenian seas in the western basin of the Mediterranean Sea, and fro...

BACKGROUND The Mediterranean region is particularly vulnerable to the effect of summer temperature.Within the CIRCE project this time-series study aims to quantify for the first time the effect of summer temperature in Eastern-Southern Mediterranean cities and compared it with European cities around the Mediterranean basin, evaluating city characteristics that explain between-city heterogeneity...