NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Friday, January 31, 2014

London — Healthcare needs are changing in the Arab world, and chronic diseases linked to rising prosperity and aging populations are forcing health services to retool, even as the region grapples with political turmoil and uncertainty.

Health in the Arab World: a view from within, a new series of papers put together at the American University in Beirut and published by the medical journal The Lancet, examines these changes and challenges.

The series looks at the situation across the Arab League, including, at one end of the scale, Mauritania, Somalia and Yemen, and at the other end, the wealthy Gulf kingdoms. While there are still countries with high levels of child mortality and malnutrition, the region overall has seen remarkable progress over the past 20 years, according to the Global Burden of Disease data, on which the reports are based.