Climate change will claim an estimated nine million lives every year by the end of the century if high emissions continue, surpassing the total death toll of the Covid-19 pandemic over three years, a senior UAE health official has warned.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meetings of the Global Future Councils and Cybersecurity during a session titled“What Is the Cost of Underinvesting in Health?”, Maha Taysir Barakat, Assistant Minister for Health and Life Sciences, identified climate change as the foremost threat to global health, with economic costs reaching $2 to $4 billion annually by 2030.

The stark comparison underscores the magnitude of the climate health crisis facing the world.“I think climate change is front and central of all discussions regarding challenges to health,” she emphasised.

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Drawing from World Health Organization classifications, the Assistant Minister outlined six broad categories of global health challenges that change from year to year but represent the most pressing threats to human wellbeing.

Beyond climate change, the second category encompasses emerging diseases and antimicrobial resistance (AMR), including new viruses that jump from animals to humans and bacteria that no longer respond to treatment.

Tuberculosis, which kills 1.25 million people annually, has become an increasing challenge with antimicrobial resistance.

"What we thought worked, is now not working very well," Barakat warned. "And there are strains of tuberculosis that don't seem to respond to any antibiotics."

The third and largest category is noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), which cause three-quarters of all deaths worldwide.“Just over 40 million people die from noncommunicable diseases,” she noted, referring to the broad category that includes diabetes, heart disease, cancer, strokes, and dementia.

The fourth category covers communicable diseases beyond emerging threats. Tuberculosis remains the biggest killer in this category, while malaria affects over 200 million people annually, killing more than half a million, most of whom are children and pregnant women.

The fifth category focuses on polio, a disease the world is tantalisingly close to eliminating forever. Barakat revealed that global cases have plummeted from 380,000 in 1988 to just 36 cases so far in 2025, with 29 in Pakistan and 7 in Afghanistan.

“We're in the last mile and the most difficult mile of getting rid of this awful disease,” she said.“The last time we got rid of a disease forever was smallpox in 1980. Smallpox was the first disease ever to be eradicated from the world.I hope the next one will be polio, we're very close."

However, the Assistant Minister issued a stark warning about the critical nature of this final phase.“If we suddenly stop all our efforts to get rid of these last 36 cases, the numbers will mushroom exponentially. And very soon we'll be back to hundreds of thousands of cases of polio, not just in those two countries, but in every country around the world."

She explained that the polio virus is still detected in sewage and water systems in many countries across every continent.“If somebody who has not taken a vaccine comes across the virus, either in sewage or in dirty water or somewhere that hasn't been properly cleaned or sanitized, they will catch, they will develop polio,” Barakat said.“This is why we have to continue with the vaccination program, we have to continue with the education programs, and we really have to finish the job.”

The sixth and newest category represents an emerging threat that health officials are increasingly forced to consider: malicious attacks on the health sector, both intentional and unintentional.

“Intentionally, like cyber attacks and synthetic drugs, and unintentionally, like misinformation and disinformation,” Barakat explained.“So, this is a new category that we don't normally consider as a global health challenge, but I think increasingly we have to include it."

The Assistant Minister outlined the UAE's approach to health investment, which is guided by two fundamental principles.“One is a healthy population is a prosperous one. So with health, you have happiness and you have prosperity, you have economic up boosts,” she said.“Secondly, the value of human life. No one should die of a preventable disease, not least children."

These principles, she explained, drive the UAE's commitment to investing in health both domestically and internationally.

The UAE's dedication to global health has deep roots stretching back to the 1970s, when the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan began funding humanitarian programs even before oil was discovered in the Emirates.

“Even in the 70s, before even petrol was found, oil was found in the UAE, you find His Highness, may God rest his soul, Sheikh Zayed, funded water sanitation programs in Africa and some of the poorest parts in the world,” Barakat said.“If you go around the world, you can find in a small village that perhaps not many people know about, with a well or a water or a school with the name Zayed on it. And this all really started from the 70s."

In the 1990s, a pivotal meeting between Sheikh Zayed and former US President Jimmy Carter shaped the UAE's approach to disease eradication.“Sheikh Zayed met Jimmy Carter and got to know about his amazing humanitarian work with trying to eradicate Guinea worm with the Carter Center,” she explained.

Today, the UAE continues this legacy through extensive international health programs.“Millions of vaccines around the world have been funded by the United Arab Emirates” through organisations like UNICEF, WHO, and Gavi, Barakat noted.

The nation deploys humanitarian assistance during natural disasters, including typhoons, floods, and earthquakes, and maintains a strong presence in conflict zones.“In conflict areas like Gaza, the latest estimate was $828 million have been spent by the UAE in humanitarian aid for Gaza,” she noted.“You have field hospitals in other areas and conflict areas and you have other types of medical assistance."

“From the international level, trying to help the world and investing in trying to strengthen health systems and eliminate and eradicate diseases is really a main agenda for the UAE,” the Assistant Minister said.

Domestically, the UAE is investing heavily in what Barakat described as emerging technologies that will define 21st-century healthcare, going beyond universal health coverage and traditional disease prevention programmes.

“The UAE has invested heavily in what it thinks are the emerging technologies, over and above the usual ones,” she said, highlighting artificial intelligence as the most transformative force in modern medicine.

“I think that artificial intelligence will be the game changer in the 21st century,” Barakat stated. "I used to think it was going to be gene therapy or stem cell therapy that would be the real breakthrough of the 21st century, but I actually believe now it's artificial intelligence that will facilitate all the others. So once you crack artificial intelligence and health, I think it will open up all the other doors.”

The UAE has launched several major initiatives to advance healthcare innovation. The Emirati Genome Program aims to enable personalised medicine tailored to individual genetic profiles.

The Abu Dhabi Stem Cell Center focuses on regenerating tissue and treating degenerative diseases. The newly formed Emirates Drugs Establishment has been established to fast-track drug development and research into newer treatments.

“We really need to embrace it and use it appropriately and share data and be able to provide data that will inform individual management and also extraordinary public health advances,” Barakat said of AI's potential.

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