The Faculty of Medicine at the Islamic University of Gaza marks a beacon of light among the respected regional and international health educational institutions. Despite desperate circumstances accompanying its inception, the Faculty has since day one set out to achieve excellence, aiming to rise to prominence in the international arena. Thus, we raced against time to reach our goals, assisted by credible partners in Arabic countries: Jordan, Egypt, and Qatar, and by the close relations with medical schools in Malaysia, the UK, Turkey, South Africa, and others, who contributed to our prosperity and success.
A number of visiting delegations, participate in training, teaching, and assessing our students, and they constantly provide us with feedback, which has had profound and visible effects on enhancing and calibrating our performance.
The remarkable results of our students in the International Medical Examination (IFOM) enabled them to compete for the best opportunities abroad and represented reassuring indications that assured us that we are on the right path towards achieving our desired goals.
Also, in pursuit of excellence and international prominence, we contacted prestigious medical schools all over the globe to provide training opportunities for our students as elective courses. Subsequently, we received extraordinary testimonies from trainers who expressed their appreciation for the performance of our students which on many occasions exceeded that of students in host universities. Those testimonies, though pleasing, made us become even more determined to keep up and excel.
In recent years, the faculty of Medicine has achieved a number of incredible advances at all levels; academic, development, and infrastructure. The Faculty has held nine international conferences, with local and international participation from different institutions and medical delegations, including the University of Oxford. In addition, the faculty offers several courses that are directly taught by experts from the UK, such as the oncology and palliative care courses.
The active participation of the Hayat Center for Emergency and Crisis Management, founded by the Faculty, in training health personnel in the correct protocol for dealing with emergencies and crises has broadened the Faculty’s role in the community.
On the infrastructure level, the Faculty’s relocation to its new headquarters in the Palestine Medical City next to the only university hospital in the Gaza Strip (the Palestine-Turkey Friendship Hospital) has marked a major milestone for the Faculty since the facilities provided by the new faculty building meet the increasing demands of the faculty’s ambitious projects and programs. The Faculty has also succeeded in overcoming the obstacles left by the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on the educational process via employing various means of e-learning and rearranging clinical training in hospitals in ways that preserve the health of students and patients and maintain both the clinical training and the health services provided to the public.
The achievements of the Faculty of Medicine are many, and they would not have been possible without the concerted efforts of our distinguished and determined students, the dedicated academic and administrative staff, the generous support from the university administration, and the close cooperation with health institutions, especially the Ministry of Health, which provided our students with the best training opportunities.
Dr. Anwar I Sheikh Khalil
Dean, Faculty of Medicine
