Zora Health / Employer guide / UAE
Support employees through fertility treatment, and keep the talent you have invested in.
Fertility treatment rarely fits around a work calendar, and most employees go through it quietly, often while doing some of their best work. Zora Health helps you build practical fertility support, from policies and manager guidance to confidential care navigation and access to 128+ partner clinics in 16 countries, around your workforce and budget. Companies including Hilton, LinkedIn, Sanofi, HSBC, Mastercard, Carousell and Singapore Management University work with us.
Book an employer consultation Explore the cost calculator
Five things UAE HR leaders should know
- The UAE’s fertility rate was 1.21 births per woman in 2024 (World Bank), and Emirati births fell 11% between 2015 and 2022.
- Federal Law No. 7 of 2019, amended by Decree-Law No. 17 of 2023, lets unmarried non-Muslim couples use IVF with a parentage declaration. Donor eggs and sperm from outside the couple remain prohibited.
- Eggs, sperm and embryos can be stored for 5 years under federal law, extendable on written request, and each emirate can add its own rules.
- Public IVF funding is mainly for Emiratis, through emirate schemes such as Thiqa in Abu Dhabi and the Al Amal initiative in Dubai. Most expatriates pay privately.
- There is no statutory fertility leave, and private sector maternity leave is 60 days. A fixed annual allowance keeps your budget predictable.
Why fertility is a business problem for employers
Fertility treatment does not fit around a work calendar. A clinic sets the date of a scan the day before. Egg collection happens when the body is ready, usually about 36 hours after a final trigger injection. Then comes a two-week wait, and for many couples, another cycle. Your team feels it: missed meetings, unexplained absences, a strong performer who suddenly goes quiet.
We found no published UAE survey on how many employees hide fertility treatment from their employer. International data points the same way: in Carrot Fertility‘s 2023 survey of 5,000 people in Canada, India, Mexico, the UK and the US, 79% said they felt uneasy discussing fertility at work, and 55% said fertility challenges had hurt their job performance.
- Resignations. In a Ferring survey of more than 3,600 employees and employers in Australia, France, Japan, Poland and the UK (November 2025), 39% of people in treatment had left or considered leaving their job.
- Lower performance. 55% of respondents in Carrot’s 2023 survey said fertility challenges affected their work, and 36% in the Ferring survey felt pressure to work during treatment.
- Falling birth rates. Births among Emiratis fell 11% between 2015 and 2022, and a federal fertility centre was under study in 2025.
- Unequal access. Emirate funding schemes such as Thiqa in Abu Dhabi and the Al Amal initiative in Dubai are mainly for UAE nationals. Expatriates usually depend on employer insurance, which may exclude or cap IVF.
What employers gain
Keep the people you spent the most to develop
Replacing an employee costs one-half to two times their annual salary, according to Gallup. Treatment often starts in the years when employees are building experience that is hard to replace. A written policy, paid time off and a funded allowance can help address barriers that contribute to employee attrition.
Stand out in a tight labour market
65% of respondents in Carrot’s 2023 survey said they would change employers for a company that provides fertility benefits. Female labour force participation in the UAE was 53% in 2025, against 92% for men (World Bank, modelled ILO estimates).
Make fertility support financially predictable
A fertility benefit does not need to mean unlimited medical coverage. You can set an annual or lifetime allowance, decide which treatments qualify (IVF, IUI, egg freezing, embryo storage) and set eligibility rules. One online directory puts a full private IVF cycle at an indicative AED 17,050 to 65,100 (Zavis), so a fixed allowance caps your exposure. Aon projects a gross medical trend of 11.0% for the UAE in 2026, or 9.0% after inflation (Aon Global Medical Trend Rates Report 2026), so open-ended medical cover is getting more expensive to carry.
Zora helps employers structure benefits around local treatment costs, emirate and federal rules and the mix of Emirati and expatriate staff, so HR can run the programme within an agreed budget.
Want to see what this would look like for your UAE workforce?
What IVF costs, and what the state pays
Most IVF in the UAE happens in private clinics. In June 2020 the Minister of Health and Prevention said the country had 25 IVF clinics, 3 public and 22 private. By February 2025, Abu Dhabi alone had 14 licensed facilities providing assisted reproduction (Department of Health Abu Dhabi). We found no current national count. Prices vary by clinic and protocol, and packages often exclude medication.
| Treatment | Typical private cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| IVF, one full cycle | AED 17,050 to 65,100 | Indicative, undated directory range covering consultations, monitoring, retrieval and transfer; medication may be extra; not a quote |
| IVF, average cycle | About AED 38,000 | Average reported by Khaleej Times in July 2023; prices may have risen since |
| Egg freezing, one cycle | From AED 15,500 | Clinic price; medication may be extra |
| Egg storage renewal | From AED 1,950 a year | First year usually included in the freezing fee |
Sources: Zavis directory, indicative IVF ranges; Khaleej Times, July 2023; ART Fertility Clinics, egg freezing cost guide, revised November 2026; Gulf News, June 2020 and DOH, February 2025 for clinic numbers. We found no official national price list.
| Item | Public support (or own savings) | What the employee still carries |
|---|---|---|
| Emiratis in Abu Dhabi (Thiqa) | IVF covered under Thiqa. Daman’s coverage rules (version 3.6, updated November 2025) set a preferred age range of 18 to 47 for women (46 and 47 only with an antral follicle count of 5 or more), up to 6 egg retrievals or 3 embryo transfers per patient per year, and up to 2 social egg freezing cycles per lifetime; donor eggs, sperm and embryos are not covered | Treatment outside the criteria; time off |
| Emiratis in Dubai (Amal) | Free treatment at Dubai Health’s Fertility Center for UAE nationals from all emirates, children of Emirati mothers and Dubai decree holders (Dubai Health, current service page). The 2017 resolution required couples married for at least a year without fertility insurance and set 2 or 3 treatment sets a year; check current limits with Dubai Health | Choice of clinic; time off |
| Expatriates on standard insurance | Own savings (not a subsidy); IVF is usually excluded or capped by the policy | Most or all of the cycle cost, medication and storage |
| Time off | No statutory fertility leave; sick or annual leave only | Unpaid or annual leave days for appointments |
Sources: Daman, Thiqa coverage for assisted reproductive treatment, November 2025; Dubai Health, Al Amal initiative; The National, July 2017. See our Dubai and Abu Dhabi pages for emirate detail. We found no federal IVF subsidy for expatriates.
Age is one of the strongest predictors of IVF success, alongside individual medical and treatment factors. We found no UAE registry that publishes success rates by age, so the figures below are from the UK, not the UAE. The UK regulator, the HFEA, reports a preliminary birth rate of 35% per embryo transferred for UK patients aged 18 to 34 using fresh embryos, and average rates of 10% at 40 to 42 and 5% at 43 to 44 in 2022.
Many employees start treatment in their late 30s and some need more than one cycle, which is why the size of an allowance, and when employees can use it, matter as much as whether you offer one.
Give Employees Access to Fertility Specialists
Help employees navigate fertility care with access to doctors and clinics, treatment information, and clear guidance on IVF, egg freezing and other fertility options. Employees can explore their options privately, without needing to go through HR.
Fertility clinics in the UAE on the Zora app include ART Fertility Clinics Al Ain, Corniche Fertility Center and New Hope IVF Gynaecology & Fertility Hospital.
Fertility support that fits your workforce and budget
You do not need to overhaul your existing health insurance to support employees through fertility treatment. Start with awareness and manager education, add confidential one-to-one support, or introduce a funded allowance across your offices. There is no minimum company size.
Where included in the employer programme, eligible employees can use talks and care navigation without paying Zora a separate fee. Care navigation allowances are set in each proposal. Treatment and other third-party costs are paid separately, either by employees or through the fertility allowance their employer provides.
Companies starting the conversation
Essentials
Expert-led talks for employees and managers, fertility and menopause policy templates, manager guides and full access to the Zora app. Up to 2 talks a year.
Employees supported one to one
Navigation
Everything in Essentials, plus confidential one-to-one care navigation and access to our partner clinic network.
Large teams across Asia
Complete
Everything in Navigation, plus quarterly anonymised reporting, a dedicated account manager and scheduled review meetings with HR.
Optional add-ons can be added to any programme, subject to availability: hormone and fertility diagnostics and telehealth with specialists. Pricing is tailored to your headcount, your countries and the services you choose. Most companies start with a single talk.
Request a proposal See how Zora works for employers
Comparing fertility benefit providers? Use our RFP question bank
Most RFP templates were written for the US. Ours has 40 questions written for Asia, with why each one matters, what a good answer looks like and a scoring sheet for three providers. Six of the questions for UAE:
- Are local-plan employees covered, or only staff on international health plans?
- Do you require an infertility diagnosis before support starts?
- Which licensed clinics can employees use in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the northern emirates, and how do you check DHA, DOH and MOHAP licensing?
- How does the benefit work for unmarried non-Muslim couples under Decree-Law No. 17 of 2023, and for single employees freezing eggs?
- How do you coordinate with Thiqa or Amal for Emirati staff so the employer allowance is not paying for treatment already funded?
- Where is employee health data stored and processed, and how do you meet Federal Law No. 2 of 2019 and the PDPL?
Your download link appears here as soon as you submit. Zora Health may contact you about employee benefits; see our privacy policy.
Plan your fertility benefit budget
Fertility benefit budget planner
Model the annual claims budget for a fertility allowance. Change any number.
This is a claims budget, not a Zora quotation. Zora’s programme fees, implementation and optional services are separate.
Illustration only. Utilisation is an editable assumption, not observed Zora data. The calculation assumes each user claims their full annual allowance, and excludes programme fees and setup costs. For a tailored model, request an employer proposal.
Estimate the potential workforce impact of fertility challenges
A rough planning scenario. It applies a global infertility estimate to your headcount, so it is not a prediction for your workforce, a measured loss or a forecast of savings from any programme.
Range: AED 1,127,500 to AED 3,190,000 a year, depending on replacement cost.
Assumptions: infertility affects about 1 in 6 adults (World Health Organization, 2023), applied to employees aged 25 to 44. Replacing an employee costs one-half to two times their annual salary (Gallup, 2019); the headline uses the low end. Absence is valued at salary divided by 250 working days. Exit rate and days lost are your own assumptions.
This is a hypothetical cost scenario, not a prediction of actual employee departures, an estimate of Zora’s financial impact or a guaranteed saving from fertility benefits.
Already have corporate health insurance? Here is where Zora fits
Your medical plan may cover some consultations and tests, but fertility treatment is often limited or excluded, so check your policy wording. Employees still need to understand their options, the public funding they qualify for and which clinic suits them.
Zora works alongside your existing insurance and benefits. We help employees get reliable information, navigate their care options and reach suitable specialists, and we give HR manager guidance, policy templates and, on the Complete programme, anonymised reporting. You strengthen fertility support without replacing your medical plan.
How Zora works
For your employees
Employees join the Zora app with a company code, or single sign-on for larger teams. They can learn about fertility and egg freezing, understand what your benefit covers, book a confidential care navigation call and find partner clinics and specialists.
For HR
- Kick-off, week 1. Agree goals, countries and which employees are eligible.
- Policy and benefit design, weeks 2 to 4. Draft or update your fertility policy using our templates.
- Launch, typically weeks 4 to 6. A launch talk for employees and managers, plus a communications pack for HR to send.
- Live support. Employees book care navigation calls and use the Zora app.
- Reporting, every 3 months, on the Complete programme. Anonymised usage, common themes and our recommendations, reviewed with your account manager.
Privacy
Employee privacy is central to our programmes. On the Complete programme, routine employer reports contain aggregated engagement and utilisation information, with safeguards to prevent identification of individual employees. On every programme, personal health information is not included in standard HR reporting, and employees can get help without telling their manager. Where eligibility checks or claims administration need individual-level data, access is limited to authorised parties for defined purposes, as agreed in writing before launch. Employee data is handled in line with Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act, the UAE’s Personal Data Protection Law (Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021) and Federal Law No. 2 of 2019.
Clinics and doctors in the UAE
Zora’s directory lists 25 clinics and 112 doctors in the UAE. Locations include Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah. Of these clinics, 19 list IVF and 7 list egg freezing.
Employees can browse clinics in the UAE, see IVF clinics and find a doctor in the UAE on the Zora app. The directory is for information only and is not an endorsement. See Zora’s employer guides for every country.
Rules and eligibility in UAE
Who can use assisted reproduction
IVF is allowed at licensed centres after at least a year of trying to conceive naturally (UAE Government portal). Decree-Law No. 17 of 2023 lets unmarried non-Muslim couples apply without a marriage certificate if they declare which partner establishes the child’s parentage, approved by an authority in their home country (Mondaq, The National). Fertilising one partner’s gametes with eggs or sperm from someone outside the couple remains prohibited. The 2023 decree removed the clause that barred implanting an embryo in the womb of another wife of the husband, and lawyers note there is no specific federal surrogacy regulation (LY Lawyers); employees should take legal advice.
Egg, sperm and embryo freezing
Embryos, unfertilised eggs and sperm may be stored for 5 years, extendable for further 5-year periods on written request (Ministry of Health and Prevention, law text). Who may freeze eggs for non-medical reasons depends on the emirate. In June 2023 BSA Law reported that the federal executive regulations allow egg freezing for medical and social reasons, including for single women, with use limited to a later pregnancy with a husband. Abu Dhabi’s Thiqa rules (Daman, November 2025) cover social egg freezing for eligible single women. A Dubai Health Authority policy issued in December 2023 allowed divorced and widowed women to freeze eggs only for medical reasons and excluded never-married women. The executive regulations were amended again by Cabinet Resolution No. 124 of 2024, issued on 16 December 2024 (Lexis Middle East); we could not review its full text, so employees should confirm current eligibility with a licensed clinic.
Maternity, parental and fertility leave
Private sector employees get 60 days’ maternity leave: 45 days on full pay and 15 on half pay, plus up to 45 unpaid days if pregnancy or birth causes illness. Either parent gets 5 working days of paid parental leave within 6 months of the birth (Gulf News, Emirates 24|7, August 2026). There is no statutory fertility or IVF leave. DIFC and ADGM have their own employment rules.
Discrimination and dismissal protection
The Labour Law bans discrimination on grounds including sex and religion, requires equal pay for work of equal value, and bars dismissing a woman because of pregnancy or maternity leave (Chambers, January 2024). Marital status is not a listed ground. Health data is protected under Federal Law No. 2 of 2019, which requires health data to be kept in the UAE unless approved and retained for at least 25 years (Al Tamimi). The PDPL treats health data as sensitive but excludes health data governed by other laws, and its executive regulations were still pending as of December 2025 (Simmons and Simmons, CookieYes).
National fertility strategy
In July 2025, the Minister of Family said a National Strategy for Family Growth and Fertility was being developed (The National), and feasibility studies began for a federal fertility centre for Emiratis (Khaleej Times, June 2025). We found no new entitlement for private sector employers or expatriate staff announced as of November 2026.
Why employers choose Zora
Companies including Hilton, LinkedIn, Sanofi, HSBC, Mastercard, Carousell and Singapore Management University work with Zora Health. We work alongside your existing insurance, helping employees use the cover they already have and find suitable specialists based on their needs.
Trying to conceive with a heavy workload took a toll on my husband and me. It helped us understand our options.
Questions HR teams ask us
Is fertility leave mandatory in the UAE?
No. The federal Labour Law provides 60 days of maternity leave and 5 working days of parental leave, but no fertility or IVF leave. Employees usually use sick or annual leave for appointments unless the employer has a policy.
Does the government pay for IVF in the UAE?
Public funding is mainly for Emiratis through emirate schemes, such as Thiqa in Abu Dhabi and the Al Amal initiative in Dubai. Most expatriates pay privately or through employer insurance.
Can unmarried couples have IVF in the UAE?
Since Decree-Law No. 17 of 2023, unmarried non-Muslim couples can apply if they declare which partner establishes the child’s parentage, with approval from an authority in their home country. Donor eggs or sperm from outside the couple are not permitted.
Does Zora replace our health insurance?
No. Zora works alongside your insurance. We help employees understand their options, find suitable specialists and use the cover they already have.
How much does a fertility benefit cost an employer?
It depends on the allowance, eligibility and expected uptake. Use the budget planner on this page for a first estimate, then ask us for a tailored proposal based on your headcount and countries.
How quickly can we launch?
Typically 4 to 6 weeks from contract to launch, depending on scope and countries. Most companies start with a single talk.
Related guides for UAE employers
Build a fertility benefit for your team
Whether you are introducing fertility benefits for the first time or improving an existing programme, tell us your headcount, countries and priorities. We will come back within two working days with suitable services, an indicative budget and a practical rollout plan for your UAE team. No obligation.
Not ready to talk yet? Explore how Zora works
Sources
- World Bank via FRED, Fertility rate, total for the United Arab Emirates, 2024
- World Bank, Labor force participation rate, female (modelled ILO estimate), UAE, 2025
- World Bank, Labor force participation rate, male (modelled ILO estimate), UAE, 2025
- The National, UAE Minister of Family outlines vision for boosting nation’s fertility rates, July 2025
- Khaleej Times, Federal fertility centre on anvil as citizens’ birth rates decline, June 2025
- Gulf News, More IVF clinics needed in UAE to meet demand, says FNC member, June 2020
- Ministry of Health and Prevention, Federal Law No. 7 of 2019 Concerning Medically Assisted Reproduction (page 5)
- UAE Government portal, Fertilisation
- The National, Change in law allows unmarried non-Muslim couples to undergo IVF in UAE, October 2023
- Mondaq, UAE’s new IVF regulations: a comprehensive overview
- LY Lawyers, The UAE’s new legal framework for IVF and assisted reproduction (Federal Decree-Law No. 17 of 2023)
- BSA Law, Egg freezing in the UAE: law reforms and changing attitudes, June 2023
- Khaleej Times, UAE’s leading IVF benefits: Emiratis share their experiences, July 2023
- The National, Sheikh Hamdan issues resolution regarding free fertility treatment for Emirati couples, July 2017
- Daman, Thiqa coverage for assisted reproductive treatment services, version 3.6, updated November 2025
- Zavis, Full IVF cycle cost in the UAE: indicative range
- ART Fertility Clinics, Egg freezing cost in the UAE, revised November 2026
- Gulf News, New UAE labour law: maternity leave extended to 60 days
- Emirates 24|7, UAE maternity and paternity leave 2026, August 2026
- Chambers and Partners, UAE labour laws safeguarding employees from discrimination, January 2024
- Al Tamimi and Company, Federal law regulating the use of ICT in the UAE healthcare sector
- Simmons and Simmons, UAE Personal Data Protection Law FAQs, December 2021
- CookieYes, UAE data protection law (PDPL), updated December 2025
- Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, Key facts and statistics
- Dubai Health, Al Amal initiative
- Department of Health Abu Dhabi, DoH reports 695 childbirths via IVF in 2024, February 2025
- Dubai Health Authority, Collection and Cryopreservation of Oocytes Policy, December 2023
- Lexis Middle East, Cabinet Decision No. 124/2024 amending the executive regulations of Federal Law No. 7/2019, December 2024
- Aon, Global Medical Trend Rates Report 2026
- Ferring Pharmaceuticals, Fertility Matters at Work and This Can Happen, workplace fertility survey, November 2025
- Carrot Fertility, Global Fertility at Work report, 2023
- Gallup, This fixable problem costs US businesses $1 trillion, 2019
- World Health Organization, 1 in 6 people globally affected by infertility, April 2023
Information on this page is correct as of 5 November 2026. Laws, public funding, insurance rules and treatment costs change often, so check current rules with the relevant authority, insurer or a qualified adviser before making decisions. This page is general information, not legal, financial, tax or medical advice.