SimplyAbuDhabi XXXVII

MM: As you know, I’ve had a chance to teach in the technical college and visit to schools and I think this focus on the individual… when the Cleveland Clinic was built here, and you can build a building, a magnificent building, maybe one of the nicest medical facilities ever created, but a building is not a home for science or medicine without the people. And what struck me was, you were looking for four to 500 doctors and scientists and you had 10,000 applications to come work here in Abu Dhabi. This is one of the great medical institutions in the world and the former head of the Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi is today, now the head of the Cleveland Clinic for the entire world. And it has been this creation that many of the world’s leading scientists, physicians, doctors are willing to come here. Speaker 5: So, on Monday, I opened the paper and I see a full-page ad related to reducing sugar, not even an ad, a public announcement. And as you know, we’ve had this diabetes epidemic, which is worldwide today, not just in the United States, but hundreds of millions of people around the world. And as you look at diabetes rates in this part of the world, uh, Saudi Arabia has a high rate, but this entire part of the world has a very high rate. And the cost of diabetes is so significant, not just in dollar terms, but what it does to the patient. And if we look at the world today and look at diabetes by region in the world today, the Middle East and North Africa has the highest incidence, but this is changing dramatically. And if you looked at presence over the years, this has continued to grow. And whether it’s Nigeria or China today, you have almost an epidemic. And as we discussed almost 15 years ago, nations that invest in bio-science will lead the world in the 21st century. Give us a little insight into that diabetes centre, the building of the Cleveland Clinic. And so, your position was not just to create services and care for the citizens but become an organisation of the quality that people from all over the world can come here. What was behind that decision? KKM: Well, we started there. You’ve outlined the challenge. And that challenge is what we saw. The numbers were horrific. Not only the numbers, the growth we were seeing in diabetes cases in the UAE was frightening. And from our perspective, and again, this goes back to what Mubadala is about. We are a financial institution. We are a sovereign fund. We invest in the UAE, but we invest mostly abroad. But when we invest in the UAE, we try to invest in investments that are sustainable and that give added value to both the economic and social development of the UAE. You saw the Cleveland Clinic and of course we’re talking about the diabetes clinic, which was the start of our investments within the healthcare sector. So, we wanted to tackle a problem, a real problem in the UAE, and we wanted to tackle it with excellence by bringing the best in class, the best partners, which was back then the Imperial College and working together and establishing this, this facility, and the research centre surrounding it. This has helped I think, thousands and thousands of patients. And not just in the UAE, in the entire region. We’ve been able to reverse diabetes, with thousands of people. And the impact it has given the society, the people in the UAE, has been dramatic. But beyond that, we’ve awoken the country to this epidemic and helped, I think, through the work we were doing in this diabetes centre in applying, real quantifiable data, of this problem to the regulators, to the government, leading to tough decisions. You know, one of the advantages we have in the UAE, being a smaller country, a country with leadership that’s decisive, is that we’re able to tackle issues head on. So, as an example, a tax was implemented I think a year or two ago, on soft drinks. A hundred per cent tax on the purchase of soft drinks, and you know, red bull and all these, sort of power drinks they call them. And that’s dramatically impacted the consumption of soft drinks, which again, will help. You cannot resolve diabetes just by having a patient facility. There has to be an entire strategy towards tackling it. And I think that’s what we’re trying to do here in the UAE. 040 | SIMPLY INFLUENTIAL We’ve been able to reverse diabetes, with thousands of people.” “ SIMPLY INFLUENTIAL | 041