Saudi Arabia reported eight MERS cases and one death in 2026, WHO says
The infections, detected across six regions between January and early October, had no links to one another. Globally MERS-CoV has caused 2,643 cases and 965 deaths since 2012.
Middle East
Health regulation, reform, and investment across the Gulf and beyond.
Substance use burden sits well below the global average across 22 Arab countries
A Global Burden of Disease analysis puts substance use disorder prevalence at 0.78% across the Arab League in 2023, about 63% below the global figure — yet women's opioid prevalence topped men's in 19 of 22 countries.
WHO's Eastern Mediterranean region is off track on measles and rubella, study finds
Measles incidence edged up and rubella more than doubled across 22 countries in 2023–2024, with outbreaks in Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan driving the trend as second-dose coverage stalled.
In post-war Homs, most residents say they cannot reliably get medicines
A survey of 1,042 people in the Syrian city found high prices the leading barrier, and more than half said they knew of deaths they attributed to medication shortages.
Emergency teams logged 317,624 chronic-disease visits in Gaza over two years
A WHO data-set analysis shows how mobile and hospital teams split the load of hypertension, diabetes and epilepsy care during the war, while a separate study tracked dialysis capacity falling.
Two Gaza studies begin to measure the war's mental-health toll
Among 383 dialysis patients, 83.6% screened for moderate-to-extreme anxiety and 58% for PTSD; a separate study of 250 displaced adolescents found trauma exposure tracking closely with post-traumatic symptoms.
An Israeli HMO biobank sequenced 1,038 patients to hunt for deafness genes
Linking exome data to electronic medical records solved 15% of unexplained hearing-loss cases and flagged new candidate genes — while showing what the records could not supply.
A review flags acute kidney injury as an under-counted toll of Yemen's cholera crisis
Severe dehydration from diarrhoeal disease and sepsis can shut down the kidneys. In a health system with little dialysis, a review argues this is a preventable driver of death that surveillance is missing.
Meningococcal cases tracked Umrah as pilgrim vaccination compliance fell to 54%
WHO recorded serogroup W135 disease in pilgrims returning from Saudi Arabia in early 2025. A modelling study estimates high vaccination coverage would cut expected cases by more than 80%.
What the 2023 Türkiye earthquakes taught about crush injury and after
One study maps the five barriers that delayed life-saving crush-syndrome care; another finds the long-term health burden of the disaster fell hardest on young women.
In a Gaza survey, those reporting severe oral pain rose from 6.5% to 73.8%
A self-reported cross-sectional study of 599 residents found sharp deterioration across every measured dimension of oral health during the war — a neglected corner of the humanitarian-health picture.
Saudi Arabia reports serious road crashes down 46% over a decade
A review by the country's Public Health Authority credits enforcement and awareness campaigns for falls in crashes, deaths and injuries from 2013 to 2023 — while naming what still holds the Vision 2030 target back.
In two Yemeni governorates, 4 in 10 infants under six months showed anthropometric failure
A facility-based study of 5,053 infants finds undernutrition begins earlier than the age group nutrition programmes usually screen — and that weight-for-age caught far more of it than arm-circumference tape.
In Iran, unhealthy-lifestyle risk is rising and unevenly spread
National surveys show risk behaviours climbing among adults with diabetes since 2007, while a separate study finds noncommunicable-disease mortality nearly twice as high in the worst-affected province as in the best.
Kuwait spent 282 days over the highest heat-danger line by one industrial threshold
A 14-year hourly analysis of the heat index finds a rising trend and a 2025 that set records, with a 'feels-like' temperature reaching 52C as early as 7am on some days.
Three regional studies show AMR's three fronts: resistance, cost, misuse
Papers in WHO EMRO's journal document multidrug-resistant hospital infections in Saudi Arabia, unaffordable injectable antibiotics in Iran, and antibiotic use without prescription in displaced Syrians.
Qatar, 428,881 newborns into a metabolic screen, is piloting a genomic one
The country's blood-spot programme has run since 2003 and reaches nearly every baby. A pilot adds genomic sequencing — where a study of Qatari genomes suggests the biggest gains lie.
In Iraq's Thi Qar province, home slaughter and tick bites drove CCHF infection
A study of 806 suspected cases found nearly a quarter were confirmed Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, all the main risk factors tied to livestock handling — as warming expands the range of the ticks that carry it.
Heat, outdoor work and the kidney: what the MENA evidence adds up to
A regional review finds heat-protection for outdoor workers still leans on limiting work hours, while separate papers link chronic heat exposure among Gulf migrant labourers to a non-traditional form of kidney disease.
Two analyses map how sanctions ripple through Iran's health services
Peer-reviewed work in 2026 argues the effects reach past medicine shortages into financing, procurement, workforce and continuity of care — and frames the finding as association, not proof of cause.
How many people are living with HIV in Gaza is now unknown, a review says
Before October 2023, Palestinian health authorities had documented 50 people living with HIV in Gaza. A viewpoint argues the collapse of testing and treatment has since erased that count entirely.
Dubai's premarital genomic screening flagged 8% of couples as at risk
A mandatory citywide programme sequenced 782 genes in 1,000 prospective couples. The at-risk rate was double that of a comparable Australian study, and most flagged couples still chose to marry.
In Jordan's Zaatari camp, heat and dust worsen chronic-disease symptoms
A prospective study of 660 Syrian refugees living with noncommunicable diseases found symptom burden peaked in the hottest, dustiest period — with asthma and hypertension carrying the highest risk.
547 diphtheria cases in one Yemeni governorate, 92% of them unvaccinated
A registry analysis of Abyan Governorate from 2020 to 2024 puts numbers on a vaccine-preventable disease that returned as immunisation coverage fell — with the heaviest toll among children aged 5 to 9.
UAE hospitals are using AI to flag sepsis six hours before doctors would catch it
The tool reads vital signs, lab results, and history the way clinicians already do — just faster and continuously. Its accuracy tops out around 90%, which means it's also still wrong a meaningful share of the time.
WHO documented 27 attacks on Lebanese healthcare in a month, then asked for $30.3M
The emergency funding is meant to keep trauma care, disease surveillance and maternal care running in Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Jordan, atop a regional appeal only 37% funded.
Kuwait is building its way out of sending patients abroad for treatment
Twenty hospital and health-facility projects, worth $462 million, are meant to reduce how often Kuwaitis have to travel overseas for specialized care. Thirteen are already under construction.
Jordan just guaranteed every child with cancer in the country free medicine for five years
The country became the first in its region to receive shipments through a WHO-backed platform supplying 46 essential cancer drugs — refugees included, at no cost.
Israel will stop licensing doctors from medical schools it doesn't recognize
The reform followed an investigation into training quality at some foreign schools. It is also projected to disproportionately affect Arab professionals, a large share of those graduates.
Israel had 2.5 billion shekels worth of drugs worth funding and 650 million to spend
The committee that decides what Israel's national insurance covers added new cancer and depression drugs to the 2026 list — and turned down an early Alzheimer's treatment because of what it would have cost.
Iran province logs a six-year decline in Crimean-Congo fever cases
A surveillance analysis of Sistan and Baluchestan finds confirmed and probable cases falling from a 2019 peak, with an 11% fatality rate and a clear winter clustering.
Saudi life expectancy climbed nearly six years since 2016, the health ministry says
Coverage access rose from 86% to 96.4% of the population in four years. The government's own target — 80 years by 2030 — is now less than a year of progress away.
Lebanon investigated only 52% of suspected measles cases adequately, a review finds
An analysis of a decade of surveillance data shows the system leans heavily on hospitals and misses cases in the community — the weakness that lets measles circulate undetected between outbreaks.
Dubai just created a government agency whose only job is regulating longevity medicine
The Dubai Longevity Authority will oversee everything from lab research to the clinics selling anti-aging treatments — a regulatory structure that doesn't really exist yet anywhere else.
Two Saudi surveys find vaping widespread and tied to how users see it
Cross-sectional studies from the country's south and east report about a third of respondents vaping, with attitudes — not knowledge — the factor most strongly linked to use.
Dementia in the Middle East and North Africa is projected to rise 367% by 2050
A review pooling prevalence across the region ties the projection to modifiable risks that are unusually common there — smoking, inactivity, diabetes — layered on rapid ageing.
A review links Lebanon's refugee-era disease burden to housing, not borders
A systematic review of the Syrian crisis and infectious disease in Lebanon names overcrowding, poor sanitation and blocked healthcare access — not the presence of refugees themselves — as the reported drivers.
In a 322-patient MENA study, most granulomatous disease was recessively inherited
Chronic granulomatous disease is usually X-linked in Western cohorts. A multicentre Middle East and North Africa registry found the opposite pattern, alongside late diagnosis and a median survival of 8.5 years.
A review ties Gaza's disease surge to collapsed water and sanitation
A narrative review synthesising WHO, UNRWA and Gaza health-ministry field data reports the re-emergence of hepatitis A and poliovirus, over 200,000 diarrhoeal cases, and drug-resistant hospital pathogens.
Diabetes prevalence in the Middle East and North Africa doubled in 33 years
New GBD analysis across 21 countries finds one group whose burden fell — children — while incidence rose 92% overall and the sex pattern inverted.
Turkish doctors named violence against health workers as the top reason to leave
A study of 1,331 physicians put violence ahead of pay. Of 32 doctors who had already emigrated, two were considering coming back — and none of the women were.
Gaza war amputees scored far higher on disability than matched controls
A cross-sectional study of 96 war amputees, 53 caregivers and 95 community controls found sharply elevated disability and psychiatric symptoms, and argued for combined physical and mental-health rehabilitation.
Elite karate athletes lost the most performance at 5pm in week four of Ramadan
A twelve-athlete study tested morning, late-afternoon and late-evening sessions across the fasting month — and found the deficit was specific to time of day, not spread evenly across it.
Sleep got worse during Ramadan and mood mostly didn't — in a cohort of 30 Saudi women
Stress peaked during the fasting month and fell afterwards, but depression and anxiety stayed flat. The consistent finding across every phase was that sleep quality tracked mental health.
An Israeli AI cut antibiotic mismatch by 30%. A third of doctors ignored it anyway
Maccabi Healthcare Services studied 626 of its own physicians to work out who follows algorithmic prescribing advice — and found the pattern was about practice structure, not just attitude.
Maternal deaths climbed in a UNRWA cohort of 17,713 Gaza pregnancies
A Bulletin of the WHO study recorded 168 maternal deaths between October 2023 and June 2024, alongside higher stillbirth, neonatal-death and preterm-birth rates than before the war.
Twelve years after MERS emerged, 88% of the human research comes from one country
A scoping review of 171 studies found output peaked in 2019, fell during COVID, and left the genomic surveillance of a coronavirus with pandemic potential thinly covered.
Global waist thresholds missed 87.5% of Qatari women with obesity by body fat
A Qatar Biobank analysis derived local cut-points and found WHO's standard numbers misclassified more than half of men and nearly half of women in the sample.
Nearly half the Hajj heat-illness patients in a 2024 review were 60 or older
A study across nine facilities in Makkah recorded 1,576 cases of heat exhaustion or heatstroke and a 4.9% mortality rate — in a region where heat-health research remains remarkably thin.
Egypt cured millions of hepatitis C. Its liver cancer problem did not go away
Two 2026 reviews describe the same handover: as the virus recedes, obesity-driven fatty liver disease is moving into the space it occupied — in a population where roughly 40% of screened adults met obesity criteria.
Only 5% of Lebanese children who screened positive had ever received care
The barriers parents named most often were cost and the absence of any nearby service — not stigma, which the field has spent years treating as the main obstacle.
A Qatar birth cohort found tripled stillbirth odds in consanguineous pregnancies
The elevated risk showed up even in babies with no detectable malformation — which is not what the standard recessive-disease explanation predicts.
A Qatari genome study found 180 genes switched off in living, healthy adults
Sequencing 6,141 people turned high consanguinity into a research advantage: it produced natural human knockouts that population studies elsewhere almost never see.
A household survey puts Gaza's violent death toll a third above the official count
The first independent population-representative mortality survey in the Gaza Strip estimates 75,200 violent deaths through early January 2025 — and finds fewer non-violent excess deaths than some models predicted.
The Gulf's PM2.5 forecast rests on one number a year for each country
A January study forecasts particulate pollution across six Gulf states and reports Qatar highest at 87.90 µg/m³. The modelling is careful; the input data is annual, national and thirty-one points long.
Israel taxed sugary drinks for a year, then repealed it. Sales never fully recovered
Large taxed beverage sales fell 24 to 31 percent under the tax. In the period after repeal they remained 13 to 24 percent below pre-tax levels — and prices stayed elevated too.
MERS left the Middle East for the first time since 2019 — twice, in one week in France
Nineteen MERS cases were reported worldwide in 2025, seventeen of them in Saudi Arabia. The two in France are the first infections detected outside the region in six years.
21,853 war casualties in 149 Lebanese hospitals. Four in five deaths never reached care.
The first nationally representative analysis of the 2024 conflict in Lebanon draws on hospital and ministry records. Its most consequential number is how many of the dead arrived already dead.
Egypt clears trachoma, a disease documented there for more than 3,000 years
WHO validated Egypt as the 27th country to eliminate trachoma as a public health problem. Its programme began in 2002; the disease still blinds or impairs about 1.9 million people elsewhere.
Child wasting in Gaza tracked aid access, three times in 19 months
A UNRWA surveillance dataset of 265,974 arm-circumference measurements shows wasting rising during blockade, falling during ceasefire, then rising again — an unusually direct record of cause and effect.
Israel declares a polio outbreak found only in sewage, with no paralysis cases
Nine genetically linked virus isolates from seven environmental sites triggered the declaration. Sequencing traced the lineage back to a paralysis case reported in December 2024.