ABU DHABI, 25th April, 2026 (WAM) -- The United Arab Emirates plays an influential role in supporting and strengthening efforts to combat the spread of malaria at the global level, as its humanitarian initiatives and financial contributions contribute to accelerating steps towards the complete elimination of the disease, which affected around 282 million people in 2024, according to estimates by the World Health Organisation.
The UAE joins the world in marking World Malaria Day, observed annually on 25th April, coinciding with 29 years since no locally transmitted case has been recorded within the country since 1997, and 19 years since it was declared malaria-free by the World Health Organisation in 2007.
The UAE is among the leading supporters of efforts aimed at reducing global malaria incidence by at least 90 percent by 2030, in line with the outcomes of the Global Technical Strategy for Malaria developed by the World Health Organisation.
The UAE dedicates its expertise and contributions to reducing the spread of malaria and assisting many countries in addressing it, while international health entities and organisations commend the UAE’s support for global malaria control efforts, including its support for the No More Malaria initiative and the Mohamed bin Zayed Foundation for Humanity, as well as its humanitarian initiatives in recent years to strengthen health and treatment programmes of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) and the Roll Back Malaria Partnership.
In 2020, the UAE launched the Forecasting Healthy Futures initiative to accelerate progress in combating deadly mosquito-borne diseases, including malaria. In January 2022, the initiative launched the Institute for Malaria and Climate Solutions, a global institute concerned with combating malaria in the face of climate change and weather variability.
In January 2023, the Mohamed bin Zayed Foundation for Humanity, No More Malaria initiative, and Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence announced the expansion of the Forecasting Healthy Futures initiative through a new three-year grant worth US$5 million.
In turn, the Global Institute for Disease Elimination, which operates under the Zayed Humanitarian Legacy Foundation, announced in August last year a project focused on national data analysis to understand malaria receptivity and decline in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, aimed at supporting efforts to eliminate the disease and prevent its reintroduction in the region.
The project covers 18 countries in the Middle East and North Africa and aims to establish a database on the factors that contributed to the spread of malaria in the region over the past 100 years.
In the same context, researchers from United Arab Emirates University, in cooperation with the Indian Institute of Technology Madras – Zanzibar campus, completed a pioneering study that introduced a new data-driven framework for modelling malaria transmission dynamics.
The study represents an important step towards developing more accurate global health models by integrating artificial intelligence with mathematical epidemiology, as it presents a new method for predicting malaria outbreaks by incorporating variables based on temperature and altitude into compartmental disease models, allowing more realistic simulations of how the disease spreads, especially in regions exposed to climate variability.
At the local level, the UAE, through the Ministry of Health and Prevention, implements an effective strategy to protect society from communicable and infectious diseases through a preventive health system and an epidemiological surveillance programme to detect and treat imported cases.
The Ministry, in cooperation with local health authorities, continues to maintain the country’s malaria-free status through the effective implementation of post-elimination plans by enhancing early detection and treatment of imported cases, continuing to qualify and train the workforce in all areas of control, and strengthening activities to combat the mosquito vector of the disease.