RAWALPINDI: As many as 44 medical students from Gaza have arrived in the city to complete their education at the Rawalpindi Medical University (RMU).

Since October 7, 2023, Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has killed over 43,000 people with an extensive damage to buildings, including health and educational institutions.

Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, has been rendered non-functional while the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned of a growing health crisis with rising cases of meningitis, jaundice and other infections.

The RMU said it had become the first public sector university in Punjab to accommodate 44 students and will start special classes for them on the basis of their curriculum from Monday (today).

Talking to Dawn, RMU Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Mohammad Umer said 44 students from Gaza had become part of the RMU. He said these students had joined fourth year of the MBBS programme and would complete their two years training at the RMU.

“Both federal and provincial governments and the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) facilitated all the difficult process. PMDC President Prof Dr Rizwan Taj played a pivotal role to accommodate the students,” he said. He said the orientation session for the students from Gaza had been started and their regular classes would begin on Monday.

The RMU has constituted a special committee to supervise the process to review the curriculum in collaboration with the dean of Al Azher University, Gaza.

Special classes will be arranged and the portfolio of each of the students will be prepared to document their training activities. He said there will also be a mentoring programme on the faculty and student friendship model for the academic and social support of the students. He said a demographic, academic and medical database of the students would also be prepared.

“RMU is the only public sector medical university in Punjab to get these students, which is a pride for us to serve the children of Muslim Ummah in a difficult time,” he said.

The vice chancellor said the students had been accommodated in a hostel especially allocated for them. He said the expenses of their stay in Pakistan will be borne by philanthropists. “We are conducting research on psychological trauma, anxiety and depression of medical students in Gaza Strip during the war,” he said.

He said there was a little difference in Pakistan’s medical education and that of the university in Gaza but the basics are the same and we want that the students will start their education from the point where they had been forced to stop it.

He said special translators of Arabic had also been arranged to communicate with these students so to bridge the gap of language. He said house job training will also be provided to these doctors and in this regard PMDC was working.

Published in Dawn, November 4th, 2024