BackgroundThe draft Global Technical Strategy for malaria aims to eliminate malaria from at least 10 countries by 2020. Yemen and Saudi Arabia remain the last two countries on the Arabian Peninsula yet to achieve elimination. Over the last 50 years, systematic efforts to control malaria in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has successfully reduced malaria cases to a point where malaria is now constrained largely to Jazan Province, the most south-western area along the Red Sea. The progress toward elimination in this province is reviewed between 2000 and 2014.MethodsData were obtained from the Ministry of Health case-reporting systems, activity reports, unpublished consultants reports, and relevant scientific published papers. Sub-provincial population data were obtained the national household censuses undertaken in 2004 and 2010. Rainfall data were obtained from the Meteorological Department in Jazan.ResultsBetween 2000 and 2014 there were 5522 locally acquired cases of malaria and 9936 cases of imported malaria. A significant reduction in locally acquired malaria cases was observed from 2000 to 2014, resulting in an average annual incidence (2010–2014) of 0.3 cases per 10,000 population. Conversely imported cases, since 2000, remain consistent and higher than locally acquired cases, averaging between 250 and 830 cases per year. The incidence of locally acquired cases is heterogeneous across the Province, with only a few health districts contributing the majority of the cases. The overall decline in malaria case incidence can be attributed to coincidental expansion of control efforts and periods of exceptionally low rainfall.ConclusionsJazan province is poised to achieve malaria elimination. There is a need to change from a policy of passive case detection to reactively and proactively detecting infectious reservoirs that require new approaches to surveillance. These should be combined with advanced epidemiological tools to improve the definitions of epidemiological receptive and hotspot malaria risk mapping. The single largest threat currently remains the risks posed by imported infections from Yemen.

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Tuberculosis (TB) is a global public health concern, specifically in countries which have high prevalence of HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, unhygienic conditions, etc. Some evidence has been presented that diabetes mellitus (DM) is a risk factor for TB. On the other hand, among those who have DM, TB infection enhances glucose intolerance and worsens glycemic control. The combination of TB and DM, due to immuno-compromised status of DM, can delay the healing process of TB. The focus of this paper is the World Health Organization directly observed treatment, short course (DOTS) program implemented in Gazan province, Saudi Arabia, to treat TB. The data included some patients with both TB and DM. The data has been analyzed to assess how effective the DOTS program was in managing TB. It was found that DM was not a significant factor in the outcome of TB treatment. We used the same data and observed that the non-significance of DM is due to heterogeneity of patient population, Saudis and Non-Saudis. The prevalence of DM was very high among Saudis. This is understandable in view of different lifestyles. Non-Saudis are predominantly Yemenis. For Saudis, DM was indeed found to play a role in the treatment outcome of TB, after an application of a classification tree methodology on the data. This is the main focus of the paper.