Orient III 2025 – Focus: Health Systems and Public Health Challenges in the MENA Region

Dear ORIENT readers,

Dear ORIENT readers,
The issues affecting the MENA region are varied, complex and highly localised. This lead to intensely engaging discussion on many of these challenges, but can often lead us to ignore issues that affect people globally, and how they affect people differently in the MENA region. This edition of ORIENT turns its focus on one of those issues: health systems and public health challenges in the MENA region. Jalid Sehouli writes on the challenges encountered in Women’s health, not only in the Arab world but globally as well. Sehouli outlines how modern health systems are failing women in particular. Looking through a closer scope, Laila Mrabti and Zouhair Belamfedel Alaoui explore the shortcomings of health systems for domestic and intimate partner violence victims specifically in Morocco. Yousef Khader and his colleagues take a more holistic approach, examining the strengthening of the public health workforce in the eastern Mediterranean, specifically in the context of the Eastern Mediterranean Public Health Network (EMPHNET). Eyob Zere Asbu and his fellow researchers meanwhile analyse the health systems across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries from 2000 to 2020. The analysis both provides evidence for massive improvement while also laying bare where the GCC countries still face challenges. We hope you find this issue both engaging and thought provoking. Health is often treated as an individual concern, yet it is shaped by systemic and structural factors that deserve closer examination. By highlighting these dimensions, we aim to contribute to a broader understanding of how improving health systems not only benefits individual outcomes but also enhances the resilience and well-being of societies as a whole.

Dr. Andreas Reinicke
Director of the German Orient-Institute