On Tuesday, 7/3/2017 Preventive Medicine Department in General Health Directorate of Makkah reported to Preventive Medicine Department, Ministry of Health, Riyadh, an unusual increase in the number of Mumps cases. The Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP) was assigned to verify and investigate this outbreak. A team from FETP traveled to Makkah on Wednesday 8/3/2017 and visited the regional Health Directorate and Preventive Medicine Department to review the available information to establish the existence of an outbreak. Based on the information collected, the team decided to visit some of the schools and primary health cares that reported mumps cases.
Methodology
This outbreak had been reported from several health care centers in the holly city among foreign community students, a descriptive-Case series study was conducted with a fully structured questionnaire based on the MOH form.
Results
The total number of suspected cases was 60, 11 positive, 49 negatives. The first positive case was on 3rd of January and the last one was on 2nd of March. It seems there were two outbreaks separated by two incubation periods in between. Among those 11 positive cases, there were 8 children and 3 adults, their ages ranged between 7-46 years, with mean 19 Standard deviation (SD) 13. The nationality of the cases 4 Nigerian, 3 Myanmar, 1 Sudanese and 3 Saudi. Among all cases 6 were males and 5 were females. The cases of outbreak localized in two areas (hendaweya and nakasa) and schools related foreign community.
Conclusion
The propagation of Mumps between schools was brought by contact between some of students in same geographical area. During this outbreak of mumps, it was revealed that vaccination documentation and statistics of infectious diseases among foreigner communities' children were not available. This outbreak was predominantly among these communities and governmental school was free. Previously there was no documented data regarding the infectious diseases among the foreign communities in Makkah. Last December the children of the foreign communities started to study in afternoon schools sharing the same schools that serve Saudis in the morning, so the numbers of infectious disease are now prominent as easy detected in governmental schools