Background: The objective of this study was to assess the compliance of health care workers (HCWs) employed in Hajj in receiving the meningococcal, influenza, and hepatitis B vaccines. Methods: A cross-sectional survey of doctors and nurses working in all Mena and Arafat hospitals and primary health care centers who attended Hajj-medicine training programs immediately before the beginning of Ha...

INTRODUCTION Infection by Neisseria meningitidis, termed as meningococcal disease, can cause meningococcal meningitis and septicemia with or without meningitis. Meningococcal disease is endemic in Brazil and has a high potential to cause large-scale epidemics; therefore, it requires the immediate notification of cases to the Information System for Notifiable Diseases (SINAN) in Brazil. The aim ...

OBJECTIVE HIV-infected individuals (HIVI) are threatened by meningococcal infection and presented lower response to vaccines. Data are scarce on long-term persistence of human serum bactericidal antibody (hSBA) after a meningococcal C conjugate (MCC) vaccine in HIVI youth; the authors aimed to describe this persistence in HIVI. METHODS HIVI and HIV uninfected individuals (HIVU), aged 2-18 yea...

There are major disparities in drug and vaccine development for diseases that mainly affect the developing world, as opposed to those that affect industrialised nations. From the time of introduction of a new vaccine in Europe or the USA, the adoption of these vaccines in developing countries takes a decade or more. For example, hepatitis B vaccine and Haemophilus influenzae type b conjugate va...

AIMS To examine a number of simple clinical features and investigations in children with a non-blanching rash to see which predict meningococcal infection. METHODS A total of 233 infants and children up to 15 years of age presenting with a non-blanching rash were studied over a period of 12 months. Clinical features and laboratory investigations were recorded at presentation. The ability of e...

Acute bacterial meningitis is an important cause of morbidity and mortality among children less than five years old, Haemophilus influenzae, Streptococcus pneumoniae and Neisseria meningitidis being the most important agents of bacterial meningitis in developing countries. The development of the conjugate vaccines in the beginning of the 90's, especially type b H. influenzae (Hib), and more rec...

During periods of endemic meningococcal disease, serogroup B Neisseria meningitidis is responsible for a significant percentage of invasive diseases, and no particular clone or strain predominates (F. E. Ashton and D. A. Caugant, Can. J. Microbiol. 47: 293-289, 2001), However, in the winter of 2004 to 2005, a cluster of serogroup B meningococcal disease occurred in one region in the province of...

The reference laboratories of the Australian Meningococcal Surveillance Programme report data on the number of cases confirmed by laboratory testing using culture and by non-culture based techniques. Culture positive cases, where Neisseria meningitidis is grown from a normally sterile site or skin lesions, and non-culture based diagnoses, derived from results of nucleic acid amplification assay...

The reference laboratories of the Australian Meningococcal Surveillance Programme report data on the number of cases confirmed by laboratory testing using culture and by non-culture based techniques. Culture positive cases, where Neisseria meningitidis is grown from a normally sterile site or skin lesions, and non-culture based diagnoses, derived from results of nucleic acid amplification assay...