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The Middle East & Africa Medical Devices market overview
The Middle East & Africa Medical Devices is expected to reach US$ 21,802.3 million in 2027 from US$ 16,597.4 million in 2019; it is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 3.6% from 2020 to 2027. The Middle East & Africa region is witnessing significant growth in its healthcare sector. Middle East & Africa consists of three major countries namely United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and South Africa.
The market is driven by the factors such as increasing government initiatives, growing number of research and development activities, and increasing number of market players in the region. The government of Saudi Arabia is promoting and offering several incentives for domestic manufacturing for the medical devices, which in turn can drive the overall market growth in this country. In December 2019, Saudi Arabia’s Food and Drug Authority launched a single platform to submit and authorize new medical applications.
This single platform enables a single point of contact to deal with stringent regulations and guidelines, which will eventually increase the number of medical devices introductions in the market, leading to Saudi Arabia medical devices market growth. Further, the government and other organizations conduct conferences, symposiums, and meetings to educate the population and spread awareness about the technologically advanced and high standard medical device available in the market. For instance, the country organized a meeting on Parkinson's Disease and Other Movement Disorders in Jeddah in April 2019.
After the success of this meeting, in November 2020, the 3rd Saudi Movement Disorders Conference will be held In Jeddah to focus on more therapies in the treatment of Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders. These constructive factors are projected to drive the Saudi Arabia medical devices market during the forecast period.
Md. Afzal Kamal Editor-in-Chief Medgate Today Magazine
The Middle East & Africa region is witnessing significant growth in its healthcare sector. Middle East & Africa consists of three major countries namely United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and South Africa.
06-11
MIDDLE EAST & AFRIC A LATEST MEDICAL NEWS FROM AROUND THE REGION
SOUTHERN AFRICAN COUNTRIES CALL FOR URGENT ACTION AGAINST CHOLERA, CLIMATE-RELATED HEALTH EMERGENCIES
WHO, UNV PROGRAMME LAUNCH SECOND PHASE OF AFRICA WOMEN HEALTH CHAMPIONS INITIATIVE FLOODS RAISE CHOLERA RISK EVEN AS CASES DECLINE IN AFRICA
12-17
FROM BREATHING PATTERNS
WORLD’S LEADING EXHIBITION ORGANISER LAUNCHES BLUEPRINT FOR HOSTING ENHANCED PHYSICAL EVENTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
ADDRESSING HEALTHCARE ADMINISTRATIVE CHALLENGES IN SAUDI ARABIA
DIABETES CASES IN THE MENA REGION TO INCREASE TO OVER 135 MILLION BY 2045
THE FUTURE OF HEALTHCARE, TODAY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND MALAFFI USE AI TO PREDICT PATIENTS’ FUTURE RISK OF DISEASE IN ABU DHABI CHANGING PARADIGMS’ TRANSFORMATIVE IMPACT ON ORTHOPEDICS MARKET
HOW TO PREVENT NURSE BURNOUT AND THE GREAT RESIGNATION
HOSPITAL PROFILING
ENFIELD ROYAL CLINIC APPOINTS
DR. HANY CHIDIAC, VETERAN EXPERT IN REGENERATIVE MEDICINE
18-19
Sierra Leone today became the second African country, and the fifth globally, to launch a review of its health emergency preparedness and response capacity to identify gaps and reinforce measures against health shocks.
Dr Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh, VicePresident of Sierra Leone, launched the national Universal Health Preparedness Review (UHPR), a review process designed to bolster health emergency preparedness and response, while simultaneously building health system capacity to deliver quality universal health care.
“There is always a thin line when you are faced with a health emergency, in that you want to address the emergency without collapsing the health care delivery system,” said Dr Juldeh Jalloh. “I believe UHPR will help to address that thin line on how you respond and not lose your capability to deliver health care.”
Initially proposed by the Central African Republic and Benin in response to the challenges foregrounded by COVID-19, the State-led mechanism was launched by World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in October 2020. Under
the mechanism, countries agree to voluntary, regular and transparent peer reviews of their national health emergency preparedness capacities.
“You need to prepare for a health emergency, and you must have a resilient health system. We have adopted the life stage approach to universal health coverage so that health care is directed at every stage of life, starting with a pregnant woman, all the way until that baby is a senior citizen,” said Dr Austin H. Demby, Minister of Health in Sierra Leone. “This is where we want to go and we want WHO to support us get there faster, identifying and documenting the lessons learnt.”
The first UHPR pilot was conducted in December 2021 in the Central African Republic, followed by three others in Iraq, Portugal and Thailand.
“At its essence, the UHPR enhances how we protect ourselves, protect our neighbours and protect the world,” said Dr Mike Ryan, Executive Director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme. “There is no global health security without national development and countries that respond to outbreaks are not doing it only for themselves, but also are doing it for the world.”
Africa needs to vaccinate 33 million children to put progress back on track
An estimated 33 million children will need to be vaccinated in Africa between 2023 and 2025 to put the continent back on track to achieve the 2030 global immunization goals that include reducing morbidity and mortality from vaccine-preventable diseases, an analysis by World Health Organization (WHO) finds.
The unprecedented impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on routine immunization services has driven up the number of zero-dose and under-immunized children, rising by 16% between 2019 and 2021 and pushing the cumulative total (2019–2021) to around 33 million, which represents nearly half the global figure, according to estimates by WHO and UNICEF.
“The pandemic has seriously set back the region’s vaccination efforts and left millions of children vulnerable to vaccine-preventable diseases that can cause serious illness and even death,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa. “As countries strive to emerge from the long shadow of COVID-19, we cannot afford to lose further ground. Every effort must be made to ensure every child has access to essential vaccines.”
Without renewed political will and intensified efforts by governments, it is estimated that vaccination coverage in Africa will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2027.
This year, African Vaccination Week and World Immunization Week, from
Africa’s TB reduction rate falls short amid slowing global progress
24–30 April, is being marked under the theme “The Big Catch-Up”. This is a global push by WHO and partners to intensify efforts to reach children who missed vaccinations, as well as to restore and strengthen routine immunization programmes.
The “Big Catch-Up” campaign builds on efforts to advance countries towards the goals of Immunization Agenda 2030, a strategy endorsed during the WHO World Health Assembly in 2020. It seeks to reduce mortality and morbidity from vaccine-preventable diseases, ensure equitable access to vaccines and strengthen immunization within primary health care.
To urgently scale up coverage and protect children, WHO and partners are supporting 10 priority African countries—which are among the top 20 countries globally with the highest numbers of zero-dose children—to carry out catch-up routine vaccination campaigns.
The African region is recording around 4% annual decline rate in tuberculosis (TB) cases. Although the rate is double the global pace, the region risks missing major milestones and targets to end the disease if efforts are not scaled up rapidly.
The World Health Organization’s (WHO) End TB Strategy calls for countries to reduce TB deaths by 75% and cases by 50% by 2025 compared with the 2015 levels. To cross the 2025 milestone, the annual pace of reduction should reach 10% per year.
Yet despite the slowing pace towards the 2025 target, the African region has made progress in recent years. For example, TB deaths in the region fell by 26% between 2015 and 2021, with high-burden TB countries surpassing initial targets to lower TB cases. Accelerating TB elimination progress is crucial. This year World TB Day is being marked today under the theme “Yes, we can end TB” to spur national action to bolster TB prevention and control.
Cyclone Freddy deepens health risks in worst-hit countries
The devastation by Tropical Cyclone Freddy is exposing major health risks in the hardest-hit southern Africa countries where emergency response efforts are being ramped up to provide relief to affected communities.
More than 300 health facilities have been destroyed or flooded in Madagascar, Malawi and Mozambique following the devastation by Cyclone Freddy, leaving communities without adequate access to health services. The cyclone’s devastation has raised public health risks including the increased spread of cholera, malaria, vaccine-preventable diseases, COVID-19, as well as malnutrition. Support for trauma and mental health are also critical.
In Malawi and Mozambique the cyclone tore through amid cholera outbreaks. Cholera cases have more than doubled in Mozambique over the past week from 1023 to 2374 as of 20 March. However, Malawi, which is battling its worst-ever cholera outbreak, continued to record a decline, with cases falling to 1424
Equatorial Guinea confirms eight more Marburg cases
as of 20 March compared with 1956 the previous week. The widespread flooding and infrastructure damage Malawi has witnessed due to the cyclone risks reversing the recent progress made against cholera.
“With a double landfall in less than a month, the impact of Cyclone Freddy is immense and deepfelt. While we work to understand the full extent of the devastation, our priority is to ensure that affected communities and families receive health assistance for immediate needs as well as to limit the risks of water-borne diseases and other infections spreading,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Africa.
The extensive destruction, flooding and torrential rains have affected more than 1.4 million people in the three countries and stretched the capacity of health facilities to the limit. Houses, schools, roads and other infrastructure have been destroyed or damaged, and swathes of farmland inundated.
Equatorial Guinea’s Ministry of Health has confirmed eight more cases of Marburg, bringing the number of confirmed cases to nine since the outbreak of the viral haemorrhagic fever was declared on 13 February. The new cases were confirmed following laboratory analysis of additional samples. So far, there are 20 probable cases.There are seven deaths* among the laboratory confirmed, and all probable cases are dead. The new cases have been reported from Kie Ntem in the east, Littoral in the country’s west, and Centro Sur provinces, all with international borders with Cameroon and Gabon. The areas reporting cases are about 150 kilometres apart, suggesting wider transmission of the virus.
“The confirmation of these new cases is a critical signal to scale up response efforts to quickly stop the chain of transmission and avert a potential large-scale outbreak and loss of life,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, Word Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Africa. “Marburg is highly virulent but can be effectively controlled and halted by promptly deploying a broad range of outbreak response measures.”
Tanzania confirms first-ever outbreak of Marburg Virus Disease
cases, including a health worker, have died and the remaining three are receiving treatment. A total of 161 contacts have been identified and being monitored.
and local health care facilities to identify more contacts and provide them with appropriate care.
Tanzania today confirmed its first-ever cases of Marburg Virus Disease after laboratory tests were carried out following reports of cases and deaths in the country’s north-west Kagera region.
Tanzania’s National Public Health Laboratory analysed samples to determine the cause of illness after eight people developed symptoms including fever, vomiting, bleeding and renal failure. Five of the eight
“The efforts by Tanzania’s health authorities to establish the cause of the disease is a clear indication of the determination to effectively respond to the outbreak. We are working with the government to rapidly scale up control measures to halt the spread of the virus and end the outbreak as soon as possible,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Africa.
WHO is supporting the Ministry of Health to deploy an emergency team to Kagera to carry out further epidemiological investigations. The emergency team will focus on active case finding in the community
While Tanzania has never previously recorded a Marburg case, it has had to respond to other health emergencies including COVID-19, cholera and dengue within the past three years. A strategic risk assessment conducted by WHO in September 2022 showed that the country is at high to very high risk for infectious diseases outbreaks.
“The lessons learnt, and progress made during other recent outbreaks should stand the country in good stead as it confronts this latest challenge,” said Dr Moeti. “We will continue to work closely with the national health authorities to save lives.”
Africa burdened with largest global increase of oral diseases
Around 44% of the population in the African region suffer from oral diseases, and while the region has experienced the steepest rise globally in oral diseases over the last three decades, spending on treatment costs remains extremely low, a new report by World Health Organization (WHO) finds.
Oral health remains a low priority in many African countries, leading to inadequate financial and technical investment, which in turn undermines prevention and care services as well as oral health promotion. Around 70% of sub-
Saharan Africa countries spent less than US$ 1 per person per year on treatment costs for oral health care in 2019, the latest year for which data is available. Half of the countries in the region do not have oral health policy documents. In addition, the
region’s oral health workforce is chronically lacking, with a ratio of just 3.3 dentists per 100 000 people recorded between 2014 and 2019, approximately one-tenth of the global ratio. Such shortcomings have only been further compounded by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Oral health is integral to general health and well-being, yet it has been neglected in the region for much too long, often with severe and lasting consequences,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa on World Oral Health Day marked on 20 March.
Southern African countries call for urgent action against cholera, climate-related health emergencies
WHO, UNV programme launch second phase of Africa Women Health Champions initiative
The World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Africa and the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) Programme today launched the second phase of the Africa Women Health Champions (AWHC) initiative to recruit young African women professionals to help drive the region’s health agenda and objectives.
Ministers of Health and Water and Sanitation and Environment from 11 southern African countries today called for urgent action to facilitate cooperation and collaboration on the preparedness, readiness and response to address cholera epidemics, other waterborne diseases and climate-related public health emergencies.
With 130,705 cholera cases and including 3052 deaths registered to date since 2022 in the African region, the rapidly rising trend could lead to a higher number of cases recorded than that of 2021 ‒ the worst year for cholera in Africa in nearly a decade. The region is also witnessing cholera outbreaks in areas not usually affected by the disease. At a highlevel ministerial meeting on “Cholera epidemics and Climate-related public health emergencies” in Lilongwe on 9 and 10 March, the ministers agreed to “undertake urgent actions to facilitate cooperation and collaboration amongst our Member States for cholera, polio and climate-related public health emergency preparedness, readiness and response.”
The meeting was organized by the Government of Malawi with support from World Health Organization’s (WHO) Regional Office for Africa, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) and UNICEF. “With robust preparedness, readiness and coordinated responses at border crossings, we believe that it is possible to end cholera outbreaks in southern Africa and to achieve regional targets in eliminating the disease to guarantee a healthy future to our populations,” said Honourable Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda, Minister of Health in Malawi.
Following the successful implementation of the first phase, the AWHC initiative continues its mission of placing young African women professionals aged between 22 and 35 years as UN Volunteer health champions across WHO Country Offices in Africa. Through the initiative, WHO-AFRO and UNV committed to improving health for people on the continent, expanding opportunities for African public health professionals and nurturing the next generation of women health leaders in Africa, while contributing to gender parity for WHO workforce.
“Based on the success of the first phase, it is with pleasure that I announce the launch of the second phase starting today. With the partnership of the UNV programme, and the support of all the country offices, we aim to recruit more young women who are determined to contribute to the continent’s development in the health sector as UN Volunteers,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa.
The African Women Health Champions initiative has been a resounding success, with 120 women health champions deployed in 38 countries, representing 36 nationalities, and from more than 25 professional fields.