Every year, more than 10 million pilgrims arrive in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the Hajj or Umrah. Crowding conditions lead to high rates of respiratory infections among the pilgrims, representing a significant cause of morbidity and a major cause of hospitalization. Pre- and post-Hajj nasal specimens were prospectively obtained from a paired cohort (692 pilgrims) and from nonpaired cohorts...

BACKGROUND The primary data on the patient's status are articulated by the patient and consist of conditions that force the patient to seek treatment. Such data helps the physician effectively to make an appropriate list of differential diagnoses to establish a treatment protocol. OBJECTIVES The objective of this study was to review the frequency of patients' chief complaints in Hajj to plan ...

BACKGROUND Annually over two million Muslims from across the world converge on Mecca to perform the Hajj pilgrimage. Overcrowding at the Hajj facilitates spread of communicable diseases, especially respiratory infections. The aim of this study was to determine the attack rate of seasonal and pandemic influenza among returning Iranian pilgrims after the 2009 Hajj. METHODS Clinical data and thr...

RFID represents an ideal solution for crowd control and personal identification at Pilgrimage season (Hajj). It provides means to save lives and improve services at an affordable cost. This Chapter describes a developed prototype that uses a passive RFID wristband tag for identification of pilgrims in the holy areas during Hajj. Upon presentation of the tag to a handheld reader all information ...

BACKGROUND The Hajj Ceremony, the largest annual gathering in the world, is the most important life event for any Muslim. This study was designed to evaluate the incidence of stroke among Iranian pilgrims during the Hajj ceremony. METHODS We ascertained all cases of stroke occurring in a population of 92,974 Iranian pilgrims between November 27, 2007 and January 12, 2008. Incidence and risk f...

OBJECTIVE We compared the incidence of common diseases and accidents among Iranian pilgrims during Hajj 2004 and 2005, and determined the factors affecting the prevalence of each disease. METHODS We conducted this comparative study on 30037 Iranian pilgrims during Hajj 2004 and 75676 pilgrims during Hajj 2005, in Mecca and Medina in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In this study, 23 types of comm...

The Hajj os Calculus is a simple, nondeterministic procedure which generates precisely the class of non-3-colorable graphs. In this note, we prove exponential lower bounds on the size of tree-like Hajj os constructions .

Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, is a unique mass gathering event that raises public health concerns in the host country and globally. Although gastroenteritis and diarrhea are common among Hajj pilgrims, the microbial etiologies of these infections are unknown. We collected 544 fecal samples from pilgrims with medically attended diarrheal illness from 40 countries dur...

BACKGROUND One of the most important complications for women during hajj trip is menstruation and most commonly spotting, which is the second important problem. This complication would cause some problems in performing religious rites as the main purpose of the trip and on the other hand, it would lead to psychologic complications for women. Controlling psychologic complications of women during...

Mass gatherings can be hazardous. Hajj, the fifth pillar of Islam, is the largest annual mass gathering of humans, with more than 2 million people wearing specified garments, following prescribed religious rituals and fulfilling their religious obligations. There is a risk of communicable disease introduction, rapid amplification and, as pilgrims travel home, the potential spread into countries...