Public Health In The Arab World

This volume reviews the public health concerns and challenges specific to the complex Arab world from a multidisciplinary perspective.

This publication contains papers presented at the Middle East regional symposium, held in Beirut in June 2002, to discuss public health challenges in the Middle East and North Africa and Eastern Mediterranean (MENA/EM) regions. Issues discussed include: public health functions and infrastructures, health economics, affordable and culturally appropriate services for disease prevention and treatment to reduce the dual burden of illness and disability, promotion strategies, the HIV/AIDS situation, issues of road safety, and strengthening primary health care in Iran.

This handbook examines health and medical care in the Arab world from a systems biology approach. It features comprehensive coverage that includes details of key social, environmental, and cultural determinants. In addition, the contributors also investigate the developed infrastructure that manages and delivers health care and medical solutions throughout the region.More than 25 sections consider all aspects of health, from cancer to hormone replacement therapy, from the use of medications to vitamin deficiency in emergency medical care. Chapters highlight essential areas in the wellbeing and care of this population. These topics include women’s health care, displaced and refugee women’s health needs, childhood health, social and environmental causes of disease, health systems and health management, and a wide range of diseases of various body systems. This resource also explores issues related to access and barriers to health delivery throughout the region.Health in the Arab world is complex and rapidly changing. The health burden in the region is distributed unevenly based on gender, location, as well as other factors. In addition, crises such as armed conflicts and an expanding migrant population place additional stress on systems and providers at all levels. This timely resource will help readers better understand all these major issues and more. It will serve as an ideal guide for researchers in various biological disciplines, public health, and regulatory agencies.

This book addresses the pressing issues involved with the ethical conduct of research in one developing world region – the Arab Region. Clinical research has soared in the developing world -as pharmaceutical companies continue their search for regions with large, treatment naive populations - including the Arab region, and has profound implications for the health and the economies for the area. The ethical issues involved with the conduct of such research, however, have so far not been adequately addressed. This volume presents the issues regarding research ethics and research governance that have relevance for health authorities, regulators, industry, and academia. As a multi-authored volume it includes both international and local experts on ethical issues in research, representing all stakeholders, thus presenting a balanced view on this timely topic.

A study of the development of modern medical health services in Palestine until 1948 and in Israel, this book focuses on the interaction of state policy, class relations, voluntary organizations, and professional practice as they affect the level of participation of Arabs in the emergent health system.

The papers in this book answer the call by scholars in the fields of Public Health, Community Health, Environmental Health and Safety, Medicine, Bio-Statistics, and Decision Science, as well as the call by political actors, policy experts, and various world bodies dealing with health and safety in North Africa and the Middle East, to address the intellectual lacuna left by the dearth of scholarship on contemporary health, environmental, and safety issues in the above-mentioned regions of the world. What is unique about this edited volume is the extent to which the authors have been careful in incorporating the general public's opinions about the various public health and environmental health issues as well as the unique views of the different genders. The topics covered are broad and the depth is indisputably outstanding. Important topics dealt with include HIV and AIDS, diabetes, hepatitis B and C, as well as water and it's associated environmental, agricultural, and health impact. Even more important and innovative about this volume is the attempt by the authors to examine real and/or actual views of the research populations on environmental and public health issues based on participants' their religion; that is, whether the Islamic religion plays any significant role, for example, in determining the main characteristics of the diabetes epidemic in Islamic countries world-wide in general, and in the Arabian Peninsula in particular. There is no doubt that this volume is a pathfinder in its geographic breath of covering two politically important sub-regions of the world -- North Africa and the Middle East. Even more important is the detailed attention the volume devotes to Hepatitis B and C, especially, its impact on migration. Most of the contributors are distinguished in the subject area thereby making the volume authentic and most highly respectable.