Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease
Volume 7, Issue 4 , Pages 226-230 , July 2009

The quest for public health security at Hajj: The WHO guidelines on communicable disease alert and response during mass gatherings

  • Qanta A. Ahmed

      Affiliations

    • Department of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary Disease, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, Winthrop University Hospital, Mineola, NY, USA
    • Member, Health at Hajj and Umrah Research Group.
    • ,
  • Maurizio Barbeschi

      Affiliations

    • Epidemic and Pandemic Alert and Response/Health Security and Environment, World Health Organization, HSE/EPR, Geneva, Switzerland
    • Member, WHO Virtual Advisory Group on Mass Gatherings.
    • The author is a staff member of the World Health Organization. The author alone is responsible for the views expressed in this publication and they do not necessarily represent the decisions or the stated policy of the World Health Organization.
    • ,
  • Ziad A. Memish

      Affiliations

    • Gulf Corporation Council (States) & WHO Collaborating Center for Infection Prevention and Control, Infection Prevention and Control Program, King Abdulaziz medical City, College of Public Health and Health Informatics, King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, P.O. Box 22490, Riyadh 11426, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
    • Corresponding Author InformationCorresponding author. Tel.: +966 1 2520088x43720; fax: +966 1 2520437.
    • Member, WHO Virtual Advisory Group on Mass Gatherings.

Received 3 January 2009 ,Accepted 12 January 2009.

References 

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  5. Ahmed QA, Arabi YM, Memish ZA. Health risks at the Hajj. [Review] Lancet. 2006 Mar 25;367(9515):1008–1015
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  10. Helbing D, Johansson A, Al-Abideen HZ. The dynamics of crowd disasters: an empirical study. Physical Review E: Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics. 2007;75(4 Pt 2):1–7046109
  11. Wilder-Smith A, Memish ZA. Meningococcal disease and travel. International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents. 2003;21:102–106
  12. Fusaro A, Al-Blowi MH, Ismail MM, Khan OA, Dauphin G, Tripodi A, et al. Co-circulation of two sublineages of HPAI H5N1 virus in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with unique molecular signatures suggesting separate introductions into the commercial poultry and falconry sectors. The Journal of General Virology. 2008 Nov;89(Pt 11):2691–2697
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PII: S1477-8939(09)00005-2

doi: 10.1016/j.tmaid.2009.01.005

Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease
Volume 7, Issue 4 , Pages 226-230 , July 2009

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