Is Your Doctor or Clinic Licensed? What You Can Check in Each Emirate
Which health regulator licenses a clinic in Dubai, Dubai Healthcare City, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and the northern emirates, which official page you can open, what we could not find and what to ask the clinic. Pages opened on 12 November 2026.
Updated
In the UAE the licence that matters comes from the health regulator of the emirate where the clinic stands, and the regulators do not offer the same tools to the public. Only Dubai gave us a registry page that opened with no login. For Abu Dhabi and Sharjah we found no public doctor search, and the ministry site for the northern emirates did not open for us. Below, choose your emirate and see what we confirmed, what we could not and what to ask instead.
Which regulator covers your clinic
Choose where the clinic is. Dubai Healthcare City is a free zone inside Dubai with its own authority.
The five cases side by side
| Where the clinic is | Licensing authority | What we found on 12 November 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Dubai, outside Dubai Healthcare City | Dubai Health Authority (DHA) | Page opens |
| Dubai Healthcare City | Dubai Healthcare City Authority (DHCA), the governing body named on the free zone's own website | Directory, not a licence register |
| Abu Dhabi city and Al Ain | Department of Health, Abu Dhabi (DOH) | No public lookup found |
| Sharjah | Sharjah Health Authority (SHA) | No public lookup found |
| Ajman, Umm Al Quwain, Ras Al Khaimah or Fujairah | Most likely the Ministry of Health and Prevention (MOHAP), which guides name for most northern emirates | Not opened |
Al Ain belongs to the emirate of Abu Dhabi, so it falls with Abu Dhabi city. You can browse clinics by city on our lists of dental clinics, dermatologists and plastic surgeons.
Four things to ask before the first appointment
- The full name of the person who will treat you and their licence number, written down, not just a certificate on a wall.
- The licence number of the clinic itself, and the regulator that issued it.
- Whether the doctor is licensed as a general practitioner or as a specialist in the field you are booking, since the two are not the same.
- Whether the doctor works at this address, because a licence belongs to a person at a named facility.
The last two are questions to put to the clinic and the regulator, not rules we have checked. The prices you will be quoted afterwards are in our guide to clinic prices in the UAE.
Where our own check stopped
We did not run searches
We confirmed that pages open and read what they say about themselves. We did not look up any real doctor, so we cannot say how complete any registry is.
Three authorities left open
For Abu Dhabi and Sharjah we found services but no public lookup, and the ministry site for the northern emirates did not open. If you find a lookup we missed, write to info@clinicshortlist.com and we will check it.
Official pages opened for this guide
All opened on 12 November 2026. We link each one once, here, and the registry link also appears in the result above.