Makkah has experienced multiple disaster incidents over the last decade. The present research suggests that Makkah hospitals are insufficiently prepared for potential future disasters. This may represent a considerable threat to the health of both residents and visitors to Makkah. This study demonstrated that there is significant room for improvement in most aspects of hospital Emergency Operations Plans, in particular: reviewing the plan and increasing the frequency of multi-agency and multi-hospital drills. Preparedness for terrorism utilizing chemical, biologic, radiation, nuclear, explosion (CBRNE) and infectious diseases was found to be sub-optimal and should be assessed further. Al-Shareef AS , Alsulimani LK , Bojan HM , Masri TM , Grimes JO , Molloy MS , Ciottone GR . Evaluation of hospitals' disaster preparedness plans in the holy city of Makkah (Mecca): a cross-sectional observation study. Prehosp Disaster Med. 2017;32 (1):33-45.

In emergency health cases such as mass casualty incidents, the death ratio is still high due to lack of an automatic and intelligent system which timely observes and reports patient criticality. Indeed, the existing criticality assessment approaches are manual such as the established Simple Triage and Rapid Treatment (START). Accordingly, it is difficult for care givers to provide optimal healthcare, in particular, if the number of casualties outnumbers the responders. A challenge is how to automatically tag a possibly large number of victims with various types of disorders immediately after an incident and before the arrival of the paramedics. Such an automated tagging would provide for more optimized emergency response.We propose an automatic self-tagging methodology using body sensor networks that deliver relevant vital signs, i.e., respiratory rate, heart rate and mental status. We present three approaches to recognize and grade the criticality level of patients. The proposed approaches are generic and can be easily adapted to different scenario such as patients in intensive care units, patients in surgery and elderlies being monitored in their home. Being fully automated, our methodology is able to provide realtime tagging with higher accuracy and fine-granularity than the simplistic manual current systems. We demonstrate the viability of our self-tagging approaches by statistically demonstrating their accuracy compared to that of experts manual tagging.

The presence medicine usually leads to explosive costs for a full medical coverage in particular for rural areas, frequent nomadic patients and mass casualty incidents. Therefore, advanced tele-medicine such as mobile health (m-Health) is gaining at importance. Body Sensor Networks (BSN) represent a fundamental tool to enable future tele-medicine. In this paper, we present a novel experimental BSN platform that allows to (a) measure important health indications, and (b) to map the health status of the individual carrying the platform into a set of predefined classes. We describe the components of the experimental platform while highlighting its key benefits to the research community through a set of experiments.

Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the availability of resources, personal protective equipment PPE) and beliefs amongst Emergency Medical Services (EMS) professionals in Makkah city. Also, we aimed to assess various aspects of how Emergency Medical Services are handling the COVID-19 pandemic via online self-administrated questionnaire. Methods: A cross-sectional analysis was conducted on a convenience sample of 276 EMS providers from the city of Makkah in Saudi Arabia during the period from July 2020 to June 2021. SPSS (version 21.0) was used for data entry and data analysis. We approximate a 95% confidence interval (±0.05). Results: Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and paramedics are representing most of the participants, 44% and 43%, respectively. EMS doctor, EMS registered nurse and others represent the remaining 13%. When the participants assessed their level of satisfaction on how their institutions have handled the pandemic, 34% expressed that they were satisfied, 14% were very satisfied, while 21% and 13% expressed that they were dissatisfied and very dissatisfied. On the availability of resources, 42% had access to N95 masks whenever they needed access to them while 33% did not have access. Conclusion: As the study demonstrates a relationship between the capability of emergency medical services personnel to handle a pandemic like COVID-19 and institutional preparedness, there are still significant gaps in EMS personnel's PPE training. EMS agencies should be supported in their efforts to effectively prepare their workers while the pandemic continues in our communities. Therefore, institutions should adopt guidelines that stipulate care for patients with COVID-19, provide training to emergency personnel, and properly distribute resources and PPE.