Even on the tiniest scale, the bite of an infected female Anopheles mosquito can cause damage vastly disproportionate to its size of a few parasitic millimetres.
In too many vulnerable parts of the world, with Africa being the worst-affected continent, a mosquito bite can bring on the symptoms of malaria: fever, nausea, muscle aches, persistent fatigue and breathing difficulties. In the worst cases, when left untreated, people who contract the disease could succumb to kidney failure and death within 24 hours. Despite the severeness and sobering statistics – of the 247 million cases in 2021, an estimated 619,000 people died of it – malaria is preventable and curable.
To this end, and on World Malaria Day this week, President Sheikh Mohamed reiterated that helping people in need is a collective responsibility.
The eradication of this disease – along with several other tropical ones such as polio, river blindness and guinea worm disease – has been an important mission for the UAE. For more than a decade, the country has provided funds and worked closely with partner organisations.
In January alone, the UAE delivered a $5 million boost to an international campaign to address the effects of climate change on efforts to eradicate malaria. And the Reaching the Last Mile initiative – a portfolio of global health programmes, part of which is a 10-year, $100 million fund launched by Sheikh Mohamed in 2017 with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to combat the world's deadliest diseases – will provide key investment until the year 2026.
With such consistent effort, measurable progress has been made. More than 1.8 billion cases have been prevented in the past two decades and 11 million lives having been saved. However, there can be little room for complacency when a goal as vital as disease eradication is being aimed for, one that safeguards lives and protects the most vulnerable sections of the population – pregnant women and infants. Climate events have further complicated efforts to get ahead of the disease in some regions.
Last month, in Malawi, Cyclone Freddy reportedly caused six months' worth of rainfall in six days that then led to a sharp increase in malaria cases. People were affected by malaria last year, too, after the calamitous floods in Pakistan that left a third of the country under water. Mosquitoes breed in pools of stagnant water and cases in the aftermath of the floods rose four-fold to 1.6 million, according to the World Health Organisation.
While endangering and claiming lives, the disease is also putting huge pressure on global health systems. Erratic weather events, increasingly linked to climate change, cause setbacks to the progress in eradication efforts and underline the need to remain focused on the ultimate goal.
Climate events have unleashed the disease beyond the tropics or Africa. At the Forecasting Healthy Futures summit in Abu Dhabi last month, experts warned that malaria was increasingly prevalent at higher altitudes in areas of Africa and Latin America, as well as in countries such as Greece, which were not previously viewed as hot spots.
Given the added challenges across the world, we must bear in mind that as significant as the achievements have been, the road to malaria elimination is not without obstacles. Equally though, and with collective effort, neither is it out of reach.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Nepotism is the name of the game
Salman Khan’s father, Salim Khan, is one of Bollywood’s most legendary screenwriters. Through his partnership with co-writer Javed Akhtar, Salim is credited with having paved the path for the Indian film industry’s blockbuster format in the 1970s. Something his son now rules the roost of. More importantly, the Salim-Javed duo also created the persona of the “angry young man” for Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan in the 1970s, reflecting the angst of the average Indian. In choosing to be the ordinary man’s “hero” as opposed to a thespian in new Bollywood, Salman Khan remains tightly linked to his father’s oeuvre. Thanks dad.
