New COVID-19 resurgence in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean region.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Nabeth P
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7993928 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:BackgroundThe challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic have led to unprecedented global research activity. The Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) continues to contribute to COVID-19 research driven by the unique challenges of the region, including the protracted conflicts, already stressed health systems, and serious health and social inequalities.ObjectiveThis study aims to provide an overview of the publication activities and trends in COVID-19 research in the EMR from the onset of the disease to early 2022 using bibliometric methods.MethodsA literature search using Scopus was conducted from December 1, 2019, to January 31, 2022, using keywords relevant to COVID-19 and the World Health Organization (WHO) EMR country list. Data were exported and analyzed using Microsoft Excel and the Citation Overview function on Scopus. The quality of journals was determined using SCImago Journal Rank and CiteScore. VOSviewer software was used to visualize the relationships between authors, countries, and key terms used in the retrieved documents.ResultsA total of 6880 documents were retrieved, of which 1805 (26.24%) were from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and 1782 (25.90%) from Iran, followed by Pakistan, Egypt, and Jordan. Most published documents were affiliated with EMR universities, primarily the Tehran University of Medical Sciences in Iran and King Saud University in KSA (396/6880, 5.76%, and 370/6880, 5.4%, respectively), while only 407 (5.92%) of 6880 documents were associated with universities outside the EMR. For most of the identified publications (5020/6880, 72.97%), no funding source was reported, while King Saud University contributed the largest share (282/1860, 15.16%) of funded publications. Retrieved documents were cited 53,516 times, with an average of 7.78 (SD 34.30). Iran was the EMR country with the most links to other countries (77 links and total link strength of 1279). The 5 authors with the most publications were from KSA, Qatar, and Jordan. There were 290 high-frequency keywords that occurred ≥10 times and were linked in 7 different clusters. The cluster with the most linked keywords was related to epidemiology and mortality. Recent topics included vaccines, vaccination, machine learning, and online learning.ConclusionsThis is the first study to show trends in and project future developments of COVID-19 research activity in the EMR. Authors and institutions who led research on COVID-19 in the region were from Iran and KSA. There were multiple regional collaborative efforts; however, international collaboration was limited. Recently, interest has been shifting toward topics related to vaccination, machine learning, and online learning. Understanding the current state of research is instrumental to future research production, and our study will inform regional research initiatives on emerging concepts, as well as opportunities for collaboration and funding.
| S-EPMC9384956 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundDuring rapidly evolving outbreaks, health services and essential medical care are interrupted as facilities have become overwhelmed responding to COVID-19. In the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR), more than half of countries are affected by emergencies, hospitals face complex challenges as they respond to humanitarian crises, maintain essential services, and fight the pandemic. While hospitals in the EMR have adapted to combat COVID-19, evidence-based and context-specific recommendations are needed to guide policymakers and hospital managers on best practices to strengthen hospitals' readiness, limit the impact of the pandemic, and create lasting hospital sector improvements towards recovery and resilience.AimGuided by the WHO/EMR's "Hospital readiness checklist for COVID-19", this study presents the experiences of EMR hospitals in combatting COVID-19 across the 22 EMR countries, including their challenges and interventions across the checklist domains, to inform improvements to pandemic preparedness, response, policy, and practice.MethodsTo collect in-depth and comprehensive information on hospital experiences, qualitative and descriptive quantitative data was collected between May-October 2020. To increase breadth of responses, this comprehensive qualitative study triangulated findings from a regional literature review with the findings of an open-ended online survey (n = 139), and virtual in-depth key informant interviews with 46 policymakers and hospital managers from 18 out of 22 EMR countries. Purposeful sampling supported by snowballing was used and continued until reaching data saturation, measures were taken to increase the trustworthiness of the results. Led by the checklist domains, qualitative data was thematically analyzed using MAXQDA.FindingsHospitals faced continuously changing challenges and needed to adapt to maintain operations and provide essential services. This thematic analysis revealed major themes for the challenges and interventions utilized by hospitals for each of hospital readiness domains: Preparedness, Leadership, Operational support, logistics, supply management, Communications and Information, Human Resources, Continuity of Essential Services and Surge Capacity, Rapid Identification and Diagnosis, Isolation and Case Management, and Infection, Prevention and Control.ConclusionHospitals are the backbone of COVID-19 response, and their resilience is essential for achieving universal health coverage. Multi-pronged (across each of the hospitals readiness domains) and multi-level policies are required to strengthen hospitals resilience and prepare health systems for future outbreaks and shocks.
| S-EPMC9165776 | biostudies-literature
Project description: Not available
| S-EPMC8266285 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The COVID-19 is rapidly scattering worldwide, and the number of cases in the Eastern Mediterranean Region is rising. Thus, there is a need for immediate targeted actions. We designed a longitudinal study in a hot outbreak zone to analyze the serial findings between infected patients for detecting temporal changes from February 2020. In a hospital-based open-cohort study, patients are followed from admission until one year from their discharge (the 1st, 4th, 12th weeks, and the first year). The patient recruitment phase finished at the end of August 2020, and the follow-up continues by the end of August 2021. The measurements included demographic, socio-economics, symptoms, health service diagnosis and treatment, contact history, and psychological variables. The signs improvement, death, length of stay in hospital were considered primary, and impaired pulmonary function and psychotic disorders were considered main secondary outcomes. Moreover, clinical symptoms and respiratory functions are being determined in such follow-ups. Among the first 600 COVID-19 cases, 490 patients with complete information (39% female; the average age of 57±15 years) were analyzed. Seven percent of these patients died. The three main leading causes of admission were: fever (77%), dry cough (73%), and fatigue (69%). The most prevalent comorbidities between COVID-19 patients were hypertension (35%), diabetes (28%), and ischemic heart disease (14%). The percentage of primary composite endpoints (PCEP), defined as death, the use of mechanical ventilation, or admission to an intensive care unit was 18%. The Cox Proportional-Hazards Model for PCEP indicated the following significant risk factors: Oxygen saturation < 80% (HR = 6.3; [CI 95%: 2.5,15.5]), lymphopenia (HR = 3.5; [CI 95%: 2.2,5.5]), Oxygen saturation 80%-90% (HR = 2.5; [CI 95%: 1.1,5.8]), and thrombocytopenia (HR = 1.6; [CI 95%: 1.1,2.5]). This long-term prospective Cohort may support healthcare professionals in the management of resources following this pandemic.
| S-EPMC7644058 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The study provides the rationale, history and current status of the Index Medicus for the World Health Organization Eastern Mediterranean Region. The Index is unique in combining the geographic coverage of peer-reviewed health and biomedical journals (408 titles) from the 22 countries of the Region. Compiling and publishing the Index coupled with a document delivery service is an integral part of the WHO Regional Office's knowledge management and sharing programme. In this paper, bibliometric indicators are presented to demonstrate the distribution of journals, articles, languages, subjects and authors as well as availability in printed and electronic formats. Two countries in the Region (Egypt and Pakistan) contribute over 50% of the articles in the Index. About 90% of the articles are published in English. Epidemiology articles represent 8% of the entire Index. 15% of the journals in the Index are also indexed in MEDLINE, while 7% are indexed in EMBASE. Future developments of the Index will include covering more journals and adding other types of health and biomedical literature, including reports, theses, books and current research. The challenges and lessons learnt are discussed.
| S-EPMC2565659 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the Eastern Mediterranean Region's food system's fragility posing severe challenges to maintaining healthy sustainable lifestyle. The aim of this cross-sectional study (N = 13,527 household's family members, mean age: 30.3 ±11.6, 80% women) is to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on food consumption patterns and household's dietary diversity in 10 Eastern Mediterranean countries. A food frequency questionnaire was used to investigate the consumption patterns along with the calculation of the Food Consumption Score (FCS), a proxy indicator of dietary diversity. Data collected on cooking attitudes, shopping and food stock explore the community mitigation measures. In the overall population, before and during the pandemic, most food groups were consumed less or equal to 4 times per week. As evident from our findings and considering that the pandemic may be better, but it's not over, small to moderate changes in food consumption patterns in relatively short time periods can become permanent and lead to substantial poor dietary diversity over time. While it is a priority to mitigate the immediate impact, one area of great concern is the long-term effects of this pandemic on dietary patterns and dietary diversity in Eastern Mediterranean households. To conclude, the COVID-19 crisis revealed the region's unpreparedness to deal with a pandemic. While the aggressive containment strategy was essential for most countries to help prevent the spread, it came at a high nutritional cost, driving poor dietary diversity.
| S-EPMC8893198 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused a tremendous global impact both socially and economically. The mechanisms behind the disparity in the severity, vaccine coverage, and variant replacement patterns across European countries are unclear. In this work, we aim to reveal the possible reasons via data visualization and model fitting. We developed a model with a vaccination component to simulate the mortality waves in these countries. Deaths averted by the vaccination campaign were estimated. Finally, we discuss the potential reasons behind the differences in vaccine coverage across European countries. Contemporary transportation and global trade bring significant convenience to our daily life but also facilitate the spread of the novel virus COVID-19 to anywhere globally within a short time. The observations and results in this work highlight the importance of the global campaign to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic and future pandemics under the One Health approach.
| S-EPMC9119166 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Objectives: This scoping review is to investigate the existing literature on the mental health of Healthcare workers, including stress or distress, anxiety, depression, burnout, insomnia, and fear or phobia within the different countries in the Eastern Mediterranean region (EMR) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: We systematically searched to consolidate studies across EMR countries regarding the mental health morbidity studied, the scales, and the methodology used. The review focused on peer-reviewed academic literature published from March 2020 to November 2021. Results: One hundred sixty-seven articles were included in the review. Most publications came from lower-middle-income countries such as Iran, Pakistan, and Egypt. Most of the literature was specific to Stress/Distress (n = 94), followed by anxiety (n = 93), depression (n = 66), burnout (n = 27), insomnia (n = 20), and fear/phobia (n = 12). Conclusion: Fear, phobia, and insomnia have all been examined extensively worldwide, yet they were among the Eastern Mediterranean region's least explored outcomes. In addition, most underdeveloped countries have a low rate of publication.
| S-EPMC9845253 | biostudies-literature
Project description: Not available
| S-EPMC1618443 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Vaccine effectiveness (VE) studies provide real-world evidence to monitor vaccine performance and inform policy. The WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean supported a regional study to assess the VE of COVID-19 vaccines against different clinical outcomes in four countries between June 2021 and August 2023. Health worker cohort studies were conducted in 2707 health workers in Egypt and Pakistan, of whom 171 experienced symptomatic laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection. Test-negative design case-control studies were conducted in Iran and Jordan in 4017 severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) patients (2347 controls and 1670 cases) during the Omicron variant dominant period. VE estimates were calculated for each study and pooled by study design for several vaccine types (BBIBP-CorV, AZD1222, BNT162b2, and mRNA-1273, among others). Among health workers, VE against symptomatic infection of a complete primary series could only be computed compared to partial vaccination, suggesting a benefit of providing an additional dose of mRNA vaccines (VE: 88.9%, 95%CI: 15.3-98.6%), while results were inconclusive for other vaccine products. Among SARI patients, VE against hospitalization of a complete primary series with any vaccine compared to non-vaccinated was 20.9% (95%CI: 4.5-34.5%). Effectiveness estimates for individual vaccines, booster doses, and secondary outcomes (intensive care unit admission and death) were inconclusive. Future VE studies will need to address challenges in both design and analysis when conducted late during a pandemic and will be able to utilize the strengthened capacities in countries.
| S-EPMC11360574 | biostudies-literature