The viral haemorrhagic fevers (VHF) are a growing public health threat in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. Nearly all of them are of zoonotic origin. VHF often cause outbreaks with high fatalities and, except for yellow fever, currently there are no specific treatment or vaccination options available. In response to this growing threat, the Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean of the ...

UNLABELLED Secondhand smoke is harmful to smokers and nonsmokers, and smoke-free legislation worldwide improves health status. Lebanon has one of the weakest tobacco control regulatory environments in the Eastern Mediterranean region. However, several Lebanese workplaces and hospitality venues have chosen to implement such policies on their own. The objective of this study was to document their...

Help is needed to close the gaps in knowledge dissemination and access One of the current barriers to international knowledge-sharing is the assortment of obstacles to publication that non-native users of English from resource-limited settings must overcome. 1 In some countries, efforts to build research capacity are hampered by limited access to English-language resources for the professional ...

The desiccation of the Mediterranean Sea during the Messinian Salinity Crisis 6.0-5.3 million years ago (Ma), caused a major extinction of the marine ichthyofauna of the Mediterranean. This was followed by an abrupt replenishment of the Mediterranean from the Atlantic after the opening of the Strait of Gibraltar. In this study, we combined demographic and phylogeographic approaches using mitoch...

We present the global phylogeography of the black sea urchin Arbacia lixula, an amphi-Atlantic echinoid with potential to strongly impact shallow rocky ecosystems. Sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase gene of 604 specimens from 24 localities were obtained, covering most of the distribution area of the species, including the Mediterranean and both shores of the Atlantic. Genetic d...

Background There is a consensus that children’s needs have not been sufficiently prioritized during the COVID-19 pandemic, and their right to safe healthy childhood has compromised an extent, worldwide. A comprehensive assessment of population- individual-level changes associated with its pandemic response measures could be undertaken using human exposome concept. The defined as totality enviro...

The precipitation climatology and the underlying climate mechanisms of the eastern Mediterranean, West Asia, and the Indian subcontinent are reviewed, with emphasis on upper and middle tropospheric flow in the subtropics and its steering of precipitation. Holocene climate change of the region is summarized from proxy records. The Indian monsoon weakened during the Holocene over its northernmost...

In 2004, Aedes (Stegomyia) albopictus (Skuse, 1894) was observed for the first time in Catalonia, northeastern Spain. A decade later, it has spread throughout the eastern Mediterranean region of the country and the Balearic Islands. Framed within a national surveillance project, we present the results of monitoring in 2013 in the autonomous communities of the mainland Levante. The current study...

results we included 20 articles in our meta-analysis. the pooled hbsag prevalence in children of e and m countries was 2.73% (95% ci: %1.73% - 3.72%). the prevalence rates in the emro and middle eastern countries were 1.85% (95% ci: 1.27% - 2.43%) and 2.66% (95% ci: 1.31% - 4.01%), respectively. the prevalence rates amongst children in nations considered in more than one study were 0.81% (95% c...

This work analyses the prominent characteristics of flash flood regimes in two Mediterranean areas: the NorthWestern Mediterranean region, which includes Catalonia, France and Northern Italy, and the South-Eastern Mediterranean region, which includes Israel. The two regions are characterized by similarities in the hydro-meteorological monitoring infrastructure, which permits us to ensure homoge...