Assesment of Health Condition in Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (Sepah) Personnel in Tehran

Health condition in military personnel as a special population is always of significant notice and because of no wide data publication there is limited information about. Regarding the type of missions, personnel of Islamic Revolution Corps (Sepah) are at risk of physical and mental stress and evaluation of health status among them is necessary to improve their performance. This is a pilot survey of 232 personnel from five forces of Sepah. Health related information from past to present was collected via history taking and physical and laboratory examinations. Statistical analysis was performed with SPSS 11.5 (SPSS® Inc.) with significance level of 0.05. Mean age (±SD) was 34.1±6 years (91.1% male). 63.5% had education level above bachelors and 16.8% had some degrees of war disability. There was history of at least one type of chronic disease in 13.3% of subjects and hepatitis B, meningitis and tetanus vaccination coverage rates were 47%, 45.3% and 78.8% respectively. About 58.6% of subjects had complaint of at least on medical condition that the most important were: respiratory complaint (28.9%) psychoneurologic complaint (28.4%). In physical examination 44.4% had at least one positive sign that are mostly related to skin, eye, nose and musculoskeletal disorders. results of this pilot survey and available evidences shows that military personnel suffer from wide range of health problems and proper health management may result in improved performance among them. Thus we suggest comprehensive monitoring of health items and risk factors within all Sepah personnel.