Letter to Editor
Volume 4 Issue 1
The Importance of Oral Health in Mass Gathering
Abbas Taher1*, Ammar NH Albujeer2
1Professor, OMFS, Acting Dean, College of Dentistry, Islamic university, Najaf, Iraq, Deputy Director Nab’a Al-Hayat Foundation for Medical Sciences and Health Care, Kufa, Iraq
2Director of Nab’a Al-Hayat Foundation for Medical Sciences and Health Care, Kufa –Iraq
*Corresponding Author: Abbas Taher, E mail id: kufa54@gmail.com
Received: February 03, 2019; Published: February 10, 2020

Mass gathering is an events attended by a sufficient number more than 1,000 people assembled at a particular location for a specific purpose and for a defined period of time. Most of the published literature reports larger events accounting for more than 25,000 participants. [1,2]
In Iraq every year we have more than five huge mass gathering events ranging between 1,000,000 to 25 ,000.000 participants for visiting the holy shrines in different cities in Iraq. Each event may take than one week. Fig 1-2. This may be leading to communicable oral & systemic health and environmental problems. [3,4]
Figure 1: Peoples in mass gathering for visiting Imam Hussain Shrine in Karbala 2016

Figure 2: Peoples in mass gathering for visiting imam Ali Shrine in Najaf
During the mass gathering time, most of the peoples are not caring on the oral health. This may be leading to local and systemic communicable problem, thus we used leaflets and poster to give instruction to the peoples who were involved in the mass gathering, regarding the importance of oral health to the general health, and the possible dangerous complications may arise in negligence of the oral health. Fig 3 ,4. A hundred of literatures supported this complications. [5,6,7,8]
Figure 3: Posters distributed in different languages about the importance of oral health in the individual life

Figure 4: Larg posters distributed in public place about the importance of oral health
Disclosure
Authors have no conflict of interest, and the work was not supported or funded by any company or foundation.
References
  1. World Health Organization. Communicable disease alert and response for mass gatherings: Key considerations. Geneva (CH): WHO (2008).
  2. Locoh-Donou S., et al. “Mass-gathering medicine: a descriptive analysis of a range of mass-gathering event types”. American Journal of Emergency Medicine 31.5 (2013): 843-846.
  3. Soomaroo L and Murray V. “Weather and environmental hazards at mass gatherings”. PLOS Currents Disasters 31 (2012): 1-14.
  4. Abbas Taher., et al. “Oral Hygiene and Mass Gathering of Iraqi and Non-Iraqi Visitors in Arbaeen; A Random Sample Survey for 3500 Visitor”. Research & Reviews: Journal of Dental Sciences 5.1 (2017): 92-95.
  5. Al Rabeeah AA., et al. “Mass gatherings medicine and global health security”. Lancet 380 (2012): 3-4.
  6. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/poor-dental-hygiene-killer-liver-10264724
  7. Xiaojing Li., et al. “Systemic Diseases Caused by Oral Infection”. Clinical Microbiology Reviews 13.4 (2000): 547-558.
  8. Harun Akar., et al. “Systemic consequences of poor oral health in chronic kidney disease patients” Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology 6.1 (2011): 218-226.
  9. https://www.dentalhealth.org/blog/blogdetails/96
Citation: Okshah A. “Management of Obstructive Sleep Apnea an Overview and Case Report”. Oral Health and Dentistry 4.1 (2020): 01-03.
Copyright: © 2020 Okshah A. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.