JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The Arabeenia is the largest religious mass gathering (MG) to occur in Iraq. Conditions associated with MGs result in high occurrence of injuries. There have been no prior studies on injuries during the Arbaeenia MG.

Objective:

This study describes the injuries during Arbaeenia MG in Babel governorate in Iraq, 24 November and 14 December 2014.

Methods:

We conducted this study in Babel governorate . The Emergency Departments (ER) in six public hospitals and two major temporary medical units that werelocated along the three roads connecting the Middle and Southern Iraqi governorates. We used an Iraq Injury Surveillance System modified form to collect the information on injury patients treated in the selected facilities. Data on fatal injuries was obtained from the Coroner Office. We collected the following data on injured patients: demographics, outcome of injury, place and time of occurrence, mode of evacuation and medical care before arriving the hospital, duration of travel from place of occurrence to hospital, disposition of non-fatal injury, cause and mode of injury, and relations to the Arbaeenia MG.

Results:

Information was collected on 1,564 injured cases, of which 73 cases were fatal. About half of reported nonfatal injuries and quarter of fatal ones were related to Arbaeenia MG (P<0.0001). Most of reported injuries were unintentional (95.5%), occurred at street (65.6%), during daytime (94.1%), evacuated by other means rather than ambulance (91.7%) and did not receive pre-hospital medical care (68%). Minor injuries (26%) and traffic accidents (25.5%) were the most common type of injuries, followed by falls (17.5%). Among fatal injuries, traffic accidents and violence were the leading causes of deaths, 52% and 25%, respectively. MG injuries were more likely to be among individuals aged 21-40 years (OR= 3.5, 95%CI, 2.7-4.5) and >41 years old (OR= 7.6, 95% CI, 5.4-10.6) compared to <21 years old; more likely to be unintentional compared to assault (OR=5.3, 95%CI,1.8-15.5); more likely to happen on the street compared to at home (OR= 37.7, 95%CI, 22.4-63.6); less likely to happen during the night compared to daytime (OR= 0.2, 95%CI, 0.1-0.4); and less likely to be admitted to a hospital compared to no admission (OR=0.5, 95% CI, 0.3-0.7).

Conclusions:

The study shows that most of the injuries were minor, unintentional, non-fatal, with negligible access to ambulance transportation, and did not require hospitalization.