Novo Nordisk launched its Wegovy weight loss pill in the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday, making the Gulf state the first country outside the U.S. to receive the oral version of the drug.
Approval from the Emirates Drug Establishment came earlier this week, covering two applications: weight management and the reduction of major adverse cardiovascular events, including heart attack and stroke, in adults with obesity or overweight who also have established cardiovascular disease.
The Wegovy pill is the first oral GLP-1 receptor agonist approved for weight management. In the OASIS 4 clinical trial, the 25 mg dose taken once daily produced roughly 17% mean weight loss in adult participants with obesity or overweight who had at least one additional health condition, the company said. About one in three participants in that trial lost 20% or more of their body weight.
Speaking about how Novo Nordisk will sequence additional rollouts, Emil Kongshøj Larsen, the company's executive vice president of international operations, cited three deciding factors: whether sufficient patient demand exists, whether local clinicians are equipped to prescribe the drug, and whether the underlying healthcare and telehealth systems can sustain long-term obesity treatment. "The UAE has demonstrated strong momentum across all of these areas, and we look forward to bringing Wegovy pill to additional select countries in the coming months," he said in a statement.
Earlier this year, tied to its first-quarter earnings announcement, Novo had committed to bringing the pill to additional markets outside the U.S. before year-end, though it declined to specify which countries were in line. The UAE launch comes several months after the pill debuted in the United States in January.
The UAE launch arrives as Novo works to recover ground in the weight loss drug market. Since its U.S. debut, the pill has accumulated more than 2 million total prescriptions, and its first-quarter revenue of 2.26 billion Danish kroner ($353.6 million) came in well above analyst forecasts — a performance Novo described as the strongest GLP-1 volume launch in U.S. history. The company raised its full-year guidance following those results.
Eli Lilly $LLY introduced its competing oral obesity pill, Foundayo, in the U.S. in April, intensifying the race for market share. Novo has released a cross-trial analysis asserting that its drug achieves greater weight reduction than Foundayo, a claim that remains untested by any direct head-to-head trial between the two medications.
Globally, 1 billion people live with obesity, the company said. Within the UAE specifically, obesity affects roughly 28% of the adult population, and that burden is expected to grow — projections suggest nearly 7.5 million people in the country will be living with obesity or overweight by 2035.