Sheikh Mohammed steps in to help Iraqi boy with SMA facing two-month treatment deadline

Dubai: His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, has stepped in to fund treatment for an 11-year-old Iraqi boy with spinal muscular atrophy who has only about two months remaining to receive the care required for his condition, it was announced on Sunday. 

Abdulrahman Muhannad Al Ajili, who is 11 years and 10 months old, is at a critical stage in his treatment journey, with the window for receiving the appropriate therapy narrowing rapidly. 

Sheikh Mohammed has ordered covering the treatment, giving the child and his family renewed hope after a prolonged effort to secure help. 

Details of the treatment, including its cost and where it will be administered, have not yet been publicly disclosed.

The intervention comes little more than a week after Sheikh Mohammed stepped in to cover the full treatment for Katia Abu Al Saud, a 16-month-old Jordanian girl with spinal muscular atrophy whose family had appealed publicly for help after being told the therapy she needed was unavailable in Jordan. 

Katia travelled from Amman to Dubai with her mother on Saturday to begin treatment at Al Jalila Children’s Hospital. Sheikh Mohammed is covering the full $2.4 million, or about Dh8.8 million, cost of her treatment, which is expected to involve Zolgensma, a one-time gene therapy used for children with SMA.