OBJECTIVES To provide an overview of the current level of development and results from the national HIV surveillance systems of the 23 countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and to assess the quality of HIV surveillance systems in the period 2007-2011. METHODS A questionnaire was used to collect the information about the structure, activities and the results of HIV surveillance...

BACKGROUND Regional evidence-based guidelines for the prophylaxis and management of infantile colic are not available for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The Allied Against Infantile Functional GI Disorders (ACT) Working Group was created in January, 2015 to determine the knowledge gaps and the current management practices of infantile colic by physicians in the MENA region. The...

This paper uses panel cointegration techniques to examine the causal relationship between renewable energy consumption, economic growth and CO2 emissions for a group of 12 MENA countries covering the annual period 1975-2008. The Granger-causality results indicate that there is no causal relationship between these variables in short run except a unidirectional causality running from renewable en...

Nowadays, the world economies are rapidly moving towards being more Knowledge-based Economy (KBE) and supporting the force of knowledge as a vital component of economic growth. This recent acceleration in the transition to Knowledge-based Economy in the world, has affected regional economic performance. In this paper, we surveyed the regional convergence in Knowledge-based Economy for selected ...

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in currency :union:s internationally. The formation of currency :union: in Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has drawn much attention of Islamic countries. This paper aims to investigate the effect of currency :union: formation for trade among 49 Islamic countries over the period 1990-2012 by OCA and Augmented Gravity Model (AGM). T...

OBJECTIVES The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is perceived to have limited HIV data. The objective of this study was to quantitatively characterise the progress in HIV research in this region since the discovery of the epidemic. METHODS Four indices were defined and implemented to measure the progress of HIV research using the PubMed, Embase, MENA HIV/AIDS Epidemiology Synthesis P...

Several developing countries seek to build knowledge-based economies by attempting to expand scientific research capabilities. Characterizing the state and direction of progress in this arena is challenging but important. Here, we employ three metrics: a classical metric of productivity (publications per person), an adapted metric which we denote as Revealed Scientific Advantage (developed from...

This paper investigates the relationship between economic development and female labor force participation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Using a panel data set of 20 countries in the region for the period of 1990-2012, I develop an econometric model that tests the U-shape hypothesis. This study builds upon previous literature examining the U-shape hypothesis in time series studies...

We model ‘new ideas’ production in a panel of 17 emerging countries. Our results reveal: (i) ideas production is duplicative, (ii) externality associated with domestic knowledge stocks is of above unit factor proportionality, (iii) OECD countries raise the innovation-bar for emerging countries, (iv) there is no significant knowledge diffusion across emerging countries, and (v) growth in emergin...

In this paper we explore the patterns of interactions between military expenditure shares in the MENA region over the period 1979-2007. We explore if there are latent common factors that impact on the military expenditures of 15 countries in the MENA region and whether these factors can be interpreted. Unobserved common factors induce cross-sectional dependence and may lead traditional panel-ti...