Opening Remarks by Dr Hanan Balkhy, WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean. at the WHO & GLIDE MOU Signing Ceremony

22 MAY 2026

Your Excellency Dr Ahmed Al Sayegh, Minister of Health and Prevention of the United Arab Emirates,

Dr Farida Al Hosani, Chief Executive Officer of the Global Institute for Disease Elimination,

Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a pleasure to join you today for the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding between WHO EMRO and GLIDE.

The United Arab Emirates has long been a valued Member State and a regional leader in health innovation, digital transformation and health system excellence all central to the partnership we are formalizing today.

Today's Memorandum reflects a shared commitment to advancing disease elimination and strengthening regional health security through technical collaboration, innovation and country-driven action.

This partnership can help scale solutions from the Region to the Region, generate broader lessons, and showcase the capability and ingenuity of our Region to the world.

It also creates an opportunity to break silos and advance the integrated financing, innovation and multi-disease approaches needed for transformative and sustainable progress in disease elimination.

Through this collaboration, WHO EMRO sees important opportunities to strengthen integrated disease surveillance systems; enhance laboratory and diagnostic capacities for poliovirus and other infectious diseases; support highly sensitive surveillance in both endemic and previously polio-free countries; and advance WHO EMRO's regional multi-disease elimination framework through coordinated country support.

Importantly, this partnership will also help catalyze digital transformation, including artificial intelligence-enabled approaches to improve the efficiency, equity and impact of disease elimination programmes.

I also want to acknowledge GLIDE's continued support to WHO's mission, including contributions to WHO EMRO's regional malaria programme and broader global health efforts. These investments reflect sustained engagement and shared purpose.

We encourage continued catalytic investment in the Eastern Mediterranean Region, particularly in countries facing the highest disease burden and weakest surveillance capacities, aligned behind nationally led priorities, one coordinated plan and budget, and long-term investment in Member State systems and capacities.

As we sign this MOU today, we do so with a shared commitment to protecting vulnerable populations and building a healthier, safer and more resilient Region.