Background: The risk of dementia is reported as “epidemic” and “looming” over the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. For this, we performed a multi-language review and feasible analysis on the incidence of dementia to offer apt conclusions. Methods: Totally, 3 databases (Magiran, Scientific Information Database, and PubMed) and 1 non-database source (Google) were searched in French, English, and Persian by using specific keywords and their combinations. All searches were independent and had no restriction for the year or type of publication. We also calculated cumulative incidence of dementia for Egypt and Israel-Palestine from relevant prevalence estimates by using standard formula. Results: Little information on incidence was available, sparing Israel (2.4/100,000/year; pre-senile). Ten (48.0%) countries had none-to-little information (of any kind) on dementia, indicating considerable awareness deficit in this region. Cumulative incidence of dementia in Egypt and Israel-Palestine was 2.7% over 20 years (55 new cases) and 14.7% (130 new cases) over 6 years, respectively. In Lebanon, cumulative incidence was 7.5% over 20 years. Data looked across dementia-related factors (i.e., fertility rate, polygamy, violence, hypovitaminosis D, diabetes, hypertension, life expectancy, age structure) did not seem to support epidemic proportions of dementia for MENA. Conclusions: MENA is youthful and dementia here is neither likely to be an epidemic nor looming over. The only possible exception might be Arab pocket in Israel. To us, previous attributions on dementia do not seem to be based on the realities of this region and, therefore, may prevent pragmatic addressal of dementia. Lastly, values-based collaborations are invited to jointly fill the awareness deficit in a unique low-cost manner.

In order to understand true incident burden of epilepsy in South America and Caribbean, several sources were searched in multiple languages using keywords and combinations. The results were presented as counts, proportions, means, and/or medians along with their 95% confidence intervals (CI). No information was found from Caribbean and no information was available from six South American countries. Based on 14 estimates, annual median incidence (N = 185319, 1984–2010, 7 in rural area) of epilepsy for South America was 115.2/100,000 (95% CI 61.0–133.4, range 0.0–410.0). Random-effect pooled annual epilepsy incidence was 84.8/100,000 (95% CI 65.2–104.5). The 25th and 75th percentile of annual epilepsy incidence were 62.2/100,000 and 130.9/100,000 respectively with an interquartile range (IQR) of 68.7. Between-study variance attributable to each explanatory factor was estimated to be: 38.8% from study year, 18.1% from urban-rural milieu, 15.4% from case size, and 0.6% from study size. Descriptively, on average, 445824 (between 236070 and 516258) new cases of epilepsy are possibly occurring every year in South America. In conclusion, Caribbean needs to come forward for its own epilepsy incidence data especially when risk from numerous factors such as substance abuse, mental health, etc. deems high. Epilepsy incidence in South America is likely to be slightly lower than previously reported although this varies considerably for each country. Inter-population differences are in-part (more than 50%) related to urban-rural differences and variations over time. Our work is especially important to monitor secular trends of epilepsy incidence especially when new data would emerge and countries continue to undergo transitions.