Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Apr 30, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Jun 1, 2018 - Jun 15, 2018
Date Accepted: Dec 23, 2018
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Syndromic Surveillance of Communicable Diseases in Mobile Clinics During the Arbaeenia Mass Gathering in Wassit Governorate, Iraq, in 2014: Cross-Sectional Study
Background:
Arbaeenia is the largest religious mass gathering organized annually in Karbala city, Iraq, and is attended by 8-14 million people. Outbreaks of communicable diseases are a significant risk due to overcrowding and potential food and water contamination. Syndromic surveillance is often used for rapid detection and response to disease outbreaks.
Objective:
This study was conducted to identify the main communicable diseases syndromes among pilgrims during the Arbaeenia mass gathering in Wassit governorate, Iraq, in 2014.
Methods:
This cross-sectional study was conducted in the 40 mobile clinics established within Wassit governorates along the road to Karbala during the Arbaeenia mass gathering. Six communicable disease syndromes were selected: acute watery diarrhea, bloody diarrhea, fever and cough, vomiting with or without diarrhea, fever and bleeding tendency, and fever and rash. A simple questionnaire was used to directly gather basic demographics and the syndromic diagnosis from the attendees.
Results:
A total of 87,865 patients attended the clinics during the 10-day period, with an average of 219 patients/clinic/day. Approximately 5% (3999) of the attendees had communicable diseases syndromes: of these, 1693 (42%) had fever and cough, 1144 (29%) had acute diarrhea, 1062 (27%) presented with vomiting with/without diarrhea, and 100 (2%) had bloody diarrhea. The distribution of the syndromes did not vary by age or gender. Stool specimen cultures for
Conclusions:
Syndromic surveillance was useful in determining the main communicable diseases encountered during the mass gathering. Expansion of this surveillance to other governorates and the use of mobile technology can help in timely detection and response to communicable disease outbreaks.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.