Friday, 9th October 2009 Latest News: UCY medical school to open its doors in 2013 ...more

The Dean of the University of Cyprus Stavros Zenios and the President of the Advisory Committee for the Creation of a Medical School at UCY Andy Adam has confirmed that the process of creating a medical school is at an advanced stage and the school will most likely open its doors to its first students in 2013.

The two met President Demetris Christofias earlier this week who expressed his support for the project.

“The government’s decision to approve the proposal of the university for the creation of a medical school is very important. We have already set up an international committee of academics under the presidency of Professor Andy Adam and have started working on the project,” Zenios said yesterday, after his meeting with Christofias.

“We had an initial discussion with the President of the Republic and we believe that it is feasible to achieve our target by 2013 and accept our first students, provided that some significant decisions are made,” Zenios added.

Although questions have been raised on whether the standard of public healthcare in Cyprus is advanced enough to support a Medical School, there is also the argument that its creation will in fact raise this standard and will provide a point of reference for evaluating medical practitioners’ qualifications.

“The medical school will contribute to further raising the level of medicine in Cyprus, will provide a system for evaluating the level of medicine and of doctors, will help people because if the level of medicine in Cyprus goes up then people will not have to go abroad for treatment,” explained Adam.

“We are not talking just about training 70 students who want to become doctors. We are also talking about postgraduate education. When these academic units are set up in our hospitals, we will be improving the level of postgraduate education,” he added.

Planners, however, envision that in the first years of its establishment the Medical School will be offering pre-clinical education, and will subsequently start offering specialised training.

“The aim is to open in 2013 and therefore we must start with pre-clinical training; meaning, anatomy, physiology and all the issues that every doctor should know. Then we will continue with clinical specialties such as Surgery, Obstetrics and so on. All our needed: we cannot have one specialty and not the other,” Adam said.

Meanwhile, Zenios confirmed that the ultimate objective is to develop an international medical academic centre at UCY. “UCY is not just a Cypriot university. It is an international university and our medical school will have international credentials,” he said.