Mass gatherings of people, such as the annual Hajj pilgrimage, present an extraordinary challenge to global health security. To address this challenge The Lancet Infectious Diseases, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is organising an international conference of experts and stakeholders in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on October 23-25, 2010.
Religious pilgrimage, sports events, and mass movement and congregation of people due to natural disasters or conflicts are common reasons for mass gatherings. The dispersion of people from such mass gatherings has resulted in global disease outbreaks, including polio, meningitis, and cholera. In 2009, planners were confronted with the Hajj—the largest, most frequent, and best studied of mass gatherings—occurring during the H1N1 influenza pandemic. Saudi Arabia has specialist expertise in the management of mass gatherings, and based on this unique and recent expertise, the Kingdom will host the first global forum on mass gathering medicine.
Dr Ziad A Memish, Assistant Deputy Minister of Health for Preventive Medicine, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and co-Chair of the conference, said "Countries hosting mass gatherings experience a surge demand for public health capacities. Surge capacity in the home nations of those travelling to participate in each mass gathering are similarly stretched by the need to deploy additional measures to prevent disease transmission, protect health, and provide services. Resource poor countries are especially challenged".
Mass gathering medicine is complex, encompassing challenges in a number of areas: communicable disease alert and response systems; water and sanitation management; environmental health; travel medicine; vaccination strategies; implementation of international health regulations; national and international security; emergency preparedness; transportation; immigration; crowd management; border control, and bioterrorism and other terrorism management.
Speakers at the conference will include David E Marcozzi, White House, USA; Gilles Poumerol, WHO, Switzerland; Ali Khan, CDC, USA; Jiri Dvorak, FIFA / F-MARC, Zurich, Switzerland; Robert Steffen, University of Zurich, Switzerland; Lucille Blumberg, NICD, South Africa; Brian McCloskey, HPA, UK; John Brownstein, Harvard Medical School, USA; Anders Johansson, University College London, UK; Maurizio Barbeschi, WHO, Switzerland; and Gary Brunette, CDC, USA. Topics covered will range from best practices and lessons learnt from Obama's Presidential Inauguration, the South African FIFA World Cup, and Hajj, through isolation, quarantine, vaccination, and sanitation challenges in preventing global pandemics, to implications of religion, foreign policy, and international health regulations in disease control.
A press conference will take place at 13:30 on Monday, October 25, 2010. For more information and to request a media place at the conference, please contact: Ziad Memish, Ministry of Health, KSA Email zmemish@yahoo.com
For more information on the conference please visit: http://conferences.thelancet.com/massgatherings/
Journal
The Lancet Infectious Diseases