Pakistan conducted national immunization days (NIDs) for the first time in 1994. To estimate coverage, to evaluate risk factors for failure to be immunized, and to determine the effectiveness of mass media, parents of 1288 children in 714 households in four districts were surveyed after the first NID round. In each district, a high proportion of children (93%-96%) received oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) during the NID. In three districts, unimmunized or partially immunized children were less likely to receive NID OPV than were fully immunized children (Kohistan, P < .001; Quetta, P < .001; and Sibi, P = .05). Although a high proportion of children in each age cohort received NID OPV, in three districts children 0-11 months of age were less likely to receive NID OPV than were older children. Television and radio reached a high proportion of survey households, but other mass media were less effectively utilized. Risk factor and media effectiveness surveys provide important information that is useful for planning future NIDs.

Background: Acute gastroenteritis (AGE) remains a global public health problem. Rotavirus (RV), norovirus (NoV) and Sapovirus (SV) are recognized as an important causes of AGE among children worldwide. However, there is no information about prevalence of Sapovirus infection in Iraq. Objective: To assess the frequency of SV, RV and NoV in children with AGE, also to determine the risk factors associated with the disease. Methods: A cross section study was carried out for 93 children under the age of five years old with AGE who attended to the Emergency Department of Pediatrics in Al-Batool Teaching Hospital for Maternity and Children in Baqubah city, Iraq, using real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) to determine the presence of human Sapovirus nucleic acid and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to evaluate the presence of human rotavirus and human norovirus antigens. Results: The positive samples of SV were (6.5%). And the positive samples of RV and NoV were (79.6%) and (1.1%), respectively. Statistically, RV shows the higher positivity rate among viruses with significant difference (P<0.05). The present study showed that all SV and NoV cases were coinfected with RV. In addition, the present study showed that there was no statistically significant association between viruses positivity and the different sources of water, the level of mother education and clinical features (P>0.05). Conclusion: RV can be consider one of the most causes of diarrhea in children and more research are required to investigate the role of SV as a primary etiology of pediatric diarrhea.

Abstract:Hepatitis C virus infection is a major health problem among haemodialysis patients in developing countries. Nosocomial transmission of HCV infection was a considerable route, particularly during the outbreaks of infection. To compare serological and molecular methods for detection of HCV infection serum samples were screened for anti-HCV antibodies using a fourth generation enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and positive samples were confirmed by immunoblot assay. All seropositive and seronegative samples were screened for the presence of HCV-RNA by using reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR). The overall prevalence was (41.10%) in the three centers (range: 26.05% to 62.82%) with higher prevalence in Al-Kadhimiya Teaching Hospital. All seropositive samples were tested by reverse transcriptase PCR, and 24/92 (26.09%) of confirmed samples were found to contain HCV-RNA. Additionally, 2/5 (40%) of immunoblot-indeterminate and 1/3 (33.33%) of immunoblot-negative samples were also found to be HCV-RNA positive. Also all seronegative samples were screened for the presence of HCV-RNA by using pooling strategy and 2/136 (1.47%) of anti-HCV negative samples were found to be HCV-RNA positive. Our data emphasize the need for stricter adherence to infection control measures in haemodialysis centers and reinforce the importance of screening by both PCR and serological methods at regular intervals to identify all HCV-infected patients.

Background: Psoriasis is a multifactorial and inflammatory skin disease. The etiology is not well. A large number of cytokines have been shown to be elevated in serum concentration and psoriatic lesion, and the elevation is correlate with psoriasis severity. Objective: To evaluate TNF-a and TGF-B1 index in psoriasis which could help as predictive marker of severity of psoriasis in Baquba teaching hospital Iraq. Patients and Methods: Forty nine patients with psoriasis (27male and 22 female) were included in this study . Their age range between (7-70) years old. The study was performed in Baquba Teaching Hospital during period from December 2018 to June 2019. Each case was diagnosed by Dermatologist. Results: In our study we compare the mean, standard deviation and P. value of TNF-a and TGF-B in patients of psoriasis. We have found that psoriasis patients have a highly significant difference compared to controls(P=0.001) in both genders. Conclusion:This study concludes a significant association between tumor necrosis factor alpha and transforming growth factor beta-1 in psoriasis patients in both gender.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic extended to health, social and economic aspects of human life. The international failure to combat this crisis has left many countries suffering under the influence of successive waves of the pandemic. In this report, we present a private medical clinic's experience dealing with the COVID-19 epidemic in Iraq. The adopted protocol to treat COVID-19 patients has briefly been discussed with an estimated cost of treatment in the private sector. We found that most COVID-19 patients recovered from the disease, except for cases that were associated with co-morbidities. The cost of treatment in the private sector is expensive, and most infected people could not afford it without public sector support.