Medical Journal of the Islamic Republic Of Iran

en Trend of diseases among Iranian pilgrims during five consecutive years based on a Syndromic Surveillance System in Hajj Trauma Surgery Trauma Surgery Original Research Original Research Background: Every year more than 2 million people depart from Iran to Saudi Arabia for Hajj ritual which can be faced with some different diseases. There are not much information about frequencies and trend of diseases in Hajj. The main objective of this study was to determine the trend of prevalent diseases during five consecutive Hajj rituals among Iranian pilgrims.<o:p /> Methods: We established a specific surveillance system for all Iranian pilgrims who had participated in Hajj from 2004 to 2008. We monitored the pilgrims’ health status before departure, through their journey. The understudied diseases were 19 selected types of diseases in the Hajj. The occurrences of diseases were recorded on a researchers-made questionnaire. We used chi-square test for analysis with the alpha lower than 5% to reject the null hypothesis.<o:p /> Results: During 5 consecutive periods, a total of 254,823 of Iranian pilgrims were monitored for more common diseases with this system. The most prevalent diseases were as follows: at least one type of respiratory involvement (71.26%), common cold like syndrome (47.15%), and musculoskeletal disorders (18.67%), The frequency of respiratory involvement was lower in 2006 than other years (p <0.001).There were statistically significant differences between the numbers of hospitalization and patients who were referred back to Iran with the year of Hajj (p <0.001).<o:p /> Conclusion: Health managers should be informed about trend and frequency of more prevalent diseases in Hajj. Easy access to health information via such surveillance system can be possible.<o:p /> Disease, prevalence, respiratory disorders, Iran, Saudi Arabia 179 185 http://mjiri.iums.ac.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-10-1-594&slc_lang=en&sid=1 Seyed Mansour Razavi razavy@sina.tums.ac.ir 20031947532846008978 20031947532846008978 No Department of Community Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Ahmad Sabouri-Kashani Sabourika@yahoo.com 20031947532846008979 20031947532846008979 No Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Hossein Ziaee-Ardakani drhziai@gmail.com 20031947532846008980 20031947532846008980 No Department of Ophthalmology, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences,Tehran, Iran. Aminreza Tabatabaei aminrezataba@yahoo.com 20031947532846008981 20031947532846008981 No Hajj Medical Center, Tehran, Iran. Mojgan Karbakhsh mkarbakh@tums.ac.ir 20031947532846008982 20031947532846008982 No Department of Community Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences,Tehran, Iran. Hamidreza Sadeghipour sadeghipour@sina.tums.ac.ir 20031947532846008983 20031947532846008983 No Department of Physiology, School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Seyed Abdolreza Mortazavi-Tabatabaei rtaba@yahoo.com 20031947532846008984 20031947532846008984 No Proteomics Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Payman Salamati psalamati@sina.tums.ac.ir 20031947532846008985 20031947532846008985 Yes Sina Trauma and Surgery Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.