Dear Editor

In the article entitled "Iranian National Health Survey : A Brief Report" published in the previous issue of Arch Iranian Med 2002; 5 (2): 73 – 9, Dr. A Noorbala, who was involved in performing the survey, has made the following corrections:

The second survey had the same population sampling method (not the same population sample, page 73 second paragraph) as the first survey.

The mean weight of 40 – 49 year old subjects with 71.9 ± 12.5 kg belonged only to males (page 74, right column, first paragraph) and that of females was 65.3 ± 13.1 kg in the second survey. About 1.1% of the sample wore hearing aids (not 1.8%, page 74, right column, second paragraph).

Organ defects were present in 2.7% of the population older than 2 years of age, 25.7% were congenital and 27.2% (not 25%) were caused by accidents (Page 75, left column, paragraph 3). The weight of men and women aged 18 years was higher in the second survey than the first survey (page 76, right column, line 15). In Table 3 on page 77, the weight of 18-year-old and older subjects is shown according to gender (not 2 – 18 yrs).

M.S. Massarrat MD

Associate Editor

Archives of Iranian Medicine

Dear Editor,

I read your article "Iranian National Health Survey : A Brief Report" by Dr. Mohammad-Sadegh Massarrat and Dr. Susan Tahaghoghi-Mehrizi, Arch Iranian Med 2002; 5 (2): 73 – 79, with interest. While I note that the project was well supported by the Ministry and some of the most prominent characters in epidemiology and public health, it is both surprising and unfortunate that no neurological problem was identified among the sample population.

Neurological diseases forms 20-25% of medical referrals in UK and I am sure if the designers of the project had considered this category of diseases, they would have found, not the least, a variety of different headaches, epilepsy, etc. in the population. Neurological diseases like multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, migraine, head injury, and neurodegenerative diseases consumes the largest budget in health care of any nation and I am sure Iran is of no exception. Perhaps this could be considered in future surveys.

Mojtaba Zarei MD, PhD, MRCP

Department of Neurology, Clinician-Scientist Fellow (Neurology/Neuroscience), Oxford University