The Cabinet, this morning (Sunday), 18.9.11, approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to allocate NIS 20 million for upgrading teaching at hospitals in the north of the country for the benefit of students at the medical school in Safed. This is in addition to the NIS 30 million which the Government allocated to the establishment of the school.
Today’s decision follows last week’s meeting of a ministerial team chaired by Prime Minister Netanyahu, at which it was decided to allocate the funds. The decision was submitted by Prime Minister Netanyahu, Finance minister Yuval Steinitz, Education Minister Gideon Saar and Negev and Galilee Development Minister Silvan Shalom.
The medical school, which is affiliated with Bar-Ilan University, is due to open next month in Safed. It will offer a four-year course.
124 students will study at the school this year; approximately 70 of them are Israeli students who have been studying at universities abroad and who have returned to Israel in order to complete the practical stage of their medical education. The state has promised that students learning abroad will be integrated into the Israeli medical system and will increase the number of doctors in the periphery.
Staff members were mostly recruited from leading universities abroad. Some of them are immigrating to Israel with their families, while others are Israelis who are returning home to live in the Galilee.
Clinical departments at hospitals in Safed, Nahariya, Nazareth and Tiberias will be upgraded so as to adapt them for medical studies.
This decision is in keeping with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s policy of reducing gaps between the periphery and the center of the country and creating jobs, in the framework of which a series of decisions have been made, including the allocations of NIS 27 billion for the construction of a network of highways and railways, and NIS 19 billion to move IDF bases to the Negev.
