Crisis-proof: health in the Gulf

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The growth of the health industry in the Gulf region appears to be immune to the economic crisis and Dubai’s negative press. In the Middle East investments totalling many billions of dollars are planned: by 2020 the business with health in the region is predicted to reach a volume of up to 55 billion US Dollars.

An increasing number of sheikdoms and Gulf states are improving their range of medical care. The life expectancy of the local population is growing, medical requirements are increasing and the people are no longer able to escape diseases of civilization such as obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure. The health market in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi-Arabia and the UAE is expected to grow by an average of nine percent a year over the next twelve years. In brief: stable expansion rates for the health business are assured. These facts and figures have now been compiled by Germany Trade and Invest (gtai).

In Saudi Arabia alone the number of clinics is set to rise by 30 percent by 2015, but the other Arab Gulf nations such as Iraq and the Maghreb countries are also further developing and expanding their health systems. In addition to areas such as medical technology, hospital construction, training and health tourism, the entire pharmaceuticals industry is thus one of the growth sectors in the Arab world as such. 2.1 percent of worldwide pharmaceuticals consumption is currently accounted for by this region. That corresponds to a volume of over 12 billion US Dollars.

Treatment abroad

Many patients are still leaving the region in order to receive higher quality treatment particularly in the USA, Great Britain or Germany. But the sheikdoms and Gulf nations are increasingly countering this trend and expanding their own countries’ range of health care. Nevertheless, the picture in the region’s individual countries is still a markedly different one from that of the western industrial nations: in many Gulf nations there is an extremely high share of foreign workers, who, upon reaching old age, fall ill or are no longer able to work, and are then deported to their countries of origin. Among the locals meanwhile there is still an ever increasing proportion of young people while the life expectancy of the older members of the population is growing.

National medical care provision

As an example of this the gtai quotes “Dubai Healthcare City”, which thanks to its state-of-the-art health facilities, is attracting an increasing number of Gulf Arabs and also treating a growing volume of western workers in the country. According to official statistics, in the UAE there are currently 19 public hospitals, 51 private hospitals and 915 private clinics – 667 of these in the Emirate of Dubai alone. The whole health system is undergoing radical change and in the next few years there will be heavy investment in the health structure in all the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries. A few years ago Abu Dhabi was the first UAE Emirate to bind all employers to providing their employees with health insurance – at least in terms of primary health care.


In 2006 the per-capita health expenditure in the GCC nations was 630 US Dollars. In the same period in Great Britain 3,330 US Dollars, in the USA it was even as high as 6,720 US Dollars. These figures clearly illustrate the region’s enormous growth potential over the coming years, which also applies to all the industries associated with the pharmaceuticals market.

Worldwide growth

According to a current study conducted by the Hamburg Institute of International Economics (Hamburgisches WeltWirtschaftsInstitut - HWWI), the growth forecast not only applies to the Gulf region: in the industrial countries such as the USA and western Europe the medical technology market is expected to grow each year by four, in the threshold countries by even more than ten percent. Especially in countries such as Brazil, India and China, population growth and rising per-capita income are leading to increased demand. In the industrial nations, it is particularly demographic development which is boosting demand.