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Dubai: Healthcare spending in the UAE, at 2.5 per cent of GDP, is alarmingly low, experts at a conference on Thursday said, cautioning of a possible "healthcare storm" to hit the region.
According to the recent McKinsey & Co. report on modelled growth in healthcare demand, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) will require 240 per cent more than their current healthcare spending in the next 20 years, 419 per cent more on cardiovascular treatment, 323 per cent more on diabetes treatment and 275 per cent more on cancer treatment, but the countries are spending less than 5 per cent of GDPs on healthcare and the UAE is spending only 2.5 per cent.
"Even though global spending in healthcare is growing rapidly and represents a sizable sector in the global economy, the percentage of GDP spent on health by many Middle East countries is still low, which could be a recipe for a healthcare storm to hit the region," said Dr Ioan Cleaton-Jones, senior health specialist in the Health and Education Department of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank Group, in his key-note speech at GE Healthcare's second annual Middle East Media Summit at the Grosvenor House yesterday.
Cleaton-Jones said the trend around the world is for rich countries to spend a bigger portion of their income on healthcare than poor countries. But high-income Middle East countries like UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are spending a percentage of GDP comparable or lower than many middle and low-income countries like Jordan and Egypt which are spending 10.5 per cent and 6.1 per cent, respectively, of their GDP on healthcare.
He said economic development and population aging are shifting the disease mix towards chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer and the treatment for these chronic diseases requires more expensive healthcare infrastructure, because they require more procedures, more diagnostic tests.
According to Cleaton-Jones, age 65-plus population in the Middle East is growing faster than world average, driving increased need for infrastructure to treat chronic disease.
That is why there is a need for governments in the Middle East to re-prioritise their spending and allocate more funding to healthcare to be able to meet up with this challenge and avert the impending healthcare storm, he said.
He said private sector should be a key player in dealing with the challenge and already in many emerging markets, private sector health provision are growing faster than public and in other areas public and private sectors are also partnering more to rescue the situation.
The McKinsey & Co study estimates the number of hospital beds in the GCC alone will need to expand from 68,250 in 2006 to 114,450 in 2015 and 161,750 by 2025, a staggering 137 per cent rise.
To cope with costs of this burden of disease, strong emphasis will need to be placed on prevention and early detection of conditions to reduce complications and reduce the need for hospitalisation to control costs, said Dr Cleaton-Jones.
Over 50 delegates comprising leading medical professionals and media representatives attended the one-day GE Healthcare summit which discussed, among other things, the importance of earlier detection of diseases while there is still many treatment alternatives, which in turn would help to potentially reduce costs.
GE Healthcare is the $17 billion healthcare business of General Electric Company (GE) which provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care.
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