Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Transmission of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus infections among healthcare personnel in the Middle East: A systematic review

Syed Ata ur Rahman

¹Department of Pharmaceutics of Pharmaceutical Technology, College of Pharmacy, Taibah University, Al-Madinah Al-Munawarrah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; ²College of Pharmacy, Sri Satya Sai University of Technology and Medical Sciences, Sehore, Bhopal, M.P., India.

For correspondence:- Email: saur9186@gmail.com Tel:+966542004628

Accepted: 26 March 2018 Published: 30 April 2018

Citation: S. Transmission of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus infections among healthcare personnel in the Middle East: A systematic review. Trop J Pharm Res 2018; 17(4):731-739 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v17i4.24

© 2018 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To undertake a systematic review of the high mortality rate of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus infections (MERS-CoV) among healthcare personnel in the Middle East.

Methods: To conduct this systematic review various electronic databases were searched for earlier recorded studies. Prisma guidelines were used to shortlist the studies based on the inclusion and exclusion criterion. Finally, twelve studies were selected and analysed for the systematic review.

Results: Twelve articles were selected after filtering 184 articles on Coronavirus. The studies chosen for this systematic review which outline the transmission information of MERS-CoV among health care personnel. A majority of studies were from Saudi Arabia, as the prevalence of Mers-CoV in Saudi Arabia is higher than in other countries in the region. Mers-CoV transmission into humans was mainly expected from infected dromedary camels.

Conclusion: The results indicate that the use of infection control procedures and protocols, which include ensuring that all persons with respiratory infection symptoms adhere to respiratory hygiene, hand hygiene, and cough etiquette, would minimize the infection rate among HCPs. The required consumables for maintaining hand hygiene should be readily available to all HCPs.

Keywords: Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), Systematic review, healthcare-associated infections, Coronaviruses, Health care personnel