The United Arab Emirates ranked first in the world on ten healthcare competitiveness indicators for 2025, Gulf News reported. Officials at the Ministry of Health and Prevention, or MOHAP, and the Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Centre announced the result in Abu Dhabi. Three outside reports fed the rankings, the paper said: the SDG report, the Prosperity Index and the Global Gender Gap report. It also placed in the top ten worldwide on seven further health measures.
What the rankings measure
It is worth being clear about what these numbers count. They are public-health measures, and they track how the domestic system serves residents rather than how many foreign patients it treats. Four first-place results sit in maternal and child health. The UAE came first on the sex ratio at birth, a figure from the Global Gender Gap report. It also led the SDG report on birth registration for children under five, on tuberculosis incidence per 100,000 people and on the maternal mortality ratio per 100,000 live births.
A separate report, the Prosperity Index, placed the country first on six more. These were antenatal care coverage, the absence of deaths and injuries from natural disasters, national early-detection programmes, healthcare coverage, low household air pollution from fuel use, and measles immunisation. The measles immunisation figure counts children aged 12 to 23 months who were immunised before their first birthday or at any point before the survey. In the UAE that vaccine is required for school pupils from kindergarten to Grade 12, given free inside schools and waived only on proven medical grounds.
From a ranking to a business
A ranking of this kind is a strong pitch, but it is not the same thing as a medical tourism business. These measures show a system that keeps its own residents well, and that record feeds the trust patients weigh before they travel. It does not by itself show spare capacity for foreign patients, wait times for elective work, or the hospital-level accreditation that foreign patients check. Abu Dhabi and Dubai have been building that side on a separate track. The country has ranked among the highest in the world on healthcare trust in earlier coverage, and Dubai Healthcare City has begun two flagship projects aimed at foreign patients.
Seven top-ten spots fill in the same picture. Gulf News reported strong positions on wasting among children under five, from the SDG report, and on health infrastructure, credited to the World Competitiveness Yearbook and the World Talent Report. It also placed well on healthy life expectancy, on satisfaction with health services, on the low incidence of health problems and on tuberculosis treatment coverage, from the Prosperity Index. Officials tied the results to two long-range plans, UAE Centennial 2071 and the SDGs for 2030, and to a national strategy against non-communicable diseases. They also pointed to workforce measures, international accreditation, patient safety and the use of AI as the ground the scores stand on.
Tuberculosis as the test case
Tuberculosis shows how a first-place ranking is actually built. Emirati health authorities standardised their surveillance and set treatment to a single method, Gulf News reported, and the country’s health law requires that every resident found to have the disease is treated, including cases that had gone unregistered. Children are immunised at birth. Screening runs early and often, including the mandatory medical fitness checks that residency applicants must pass. That mix of law, vaccination and screening is what moves a public-health number, and Emirati authorities run the same periodic screening for communicable and non-communicable diseases under the national strategy.
What to watch
These rankings are a 2025 snapshot of the Emirati system, and the open question is whether they convert into visits. A country can lead the world on maternal mortality and tuberculosis and still have to show, on a separate count, that it fills beds with patients who flew in to use them. The figures to watch through 2026 are foreign-patient arrivals at Dubai and Abu Dhabi hospitals, the share of those patients in high-value specialties, and whether the authorities report medical tourism numbers next to the competitiveness scores.
