Dr. Shamsheer Vayalil urges public-private integration to safeguard medical supply chains and infrastructure amid modern warfare at ICMM Abu Dhabi.
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Dr. Shamsheer Vayalil, Founder and Chairman of Burjeel Holdings, has proposed a unified “Global Military-Civilian Medical Partnership” model to strengthen defense preparedness and humanitarian health systems in response to evolving warfare dynamics.
Speaking during his keynote address at the 46th ICMM World Congress of Military Medicine at ADNEC Centre Abu Dhabi, Dr. Vayalil outlined a framework designed to build sustainable emergency capacity through integrated planning and technological innovation. The congress, organized jointly by the UAE Ministry of Defence and ADNEC Group under the theme “Prepared in need, resilient through trials,” has brought together military and civilian medical specialists from more than 120 nations.
Dr. Vayalil pointed out that contemporary combat—characterized by drone surveillance, cyber threats, and critical medical supply chain vulnerabilities—requires military medicine to plan far beyond conventional battlefield trauma. Maintaining continuous clinical operations during crises demands cross-sector integration, with private healthcare contributing directly across four core pillars: specialized advanced clinical care, technology and innovation, infrastructure protection, and national readiness frameworks.
“The private sector must move beyond functioning merely as a service provider to become a strategic partner in national medical preparedness,” Dr. Vayalil said. He added that such frameworks allow military institutions to maintain operational authority while leveraging private sector infrastructure, technology, and clinical expertise.
Highlighting disaster mitigation models, he pointed to the UAE’s floating hospital deployed off Al Arish to treat injured patients from Gaza as a benchmark for military-civilian operational synergy. He also cited the rapid field deployment in Chad that provided immediate emergency medical care to 49 individuals wounded in a catastrophic fire, emphasizing that medical logistics must be pre-positioned rather than deployed reactively after a crisis emerges.
According to United Nations data, the United Arab Emirates ranked as the world’s third-largest humanitarian donor in 2025, contributing $1.46 billion to relief initiatives. Dr. Vayalil detailed Burjeel Holdings’ humanitarian footprint across more than 17 countries, which includes arranging complex surgical interventions in India for around 1,000 patients from Yemen. The group’s humanitarian medical interventions have delivered care to over 1.17 million patients.
Burjeel Holdings serves as a strategic partner to the 46th World Congress of Military Medicine, which concludes on November 13 at ADNEC Centre.
