Higher Education Council opens way to Eilat medical school

The Higher Education Council voted yesterday in favor of the establishment of a three -year before clinical medicine in Eilat. He has not yet decided whether this is an international school, which will manage it, and whether it will be eventually expanded to a six -year school. Eilaat municipality will be allowed to involve an international university in the management of the College of Medicine, but, according to yesterday’s decision, if an Israeli university is interested in doing this, it will be given.

The idea of ​​the Faculty of Medicine in Eilat is the initiative of Dr. Moshe Cohen, CEO of the International Academy of the International, which supports medical students studying abroad. Cohen’s dream is to keep these students in Israel, strengthen medical services in Eilat and the south, and bring foreign students to Israel, which is an important component in the plan regarding its economic ability, because the medical college will be private. It will be operated academically by the Strong Faculty of External Medicine (for example, Charles University in the Czech Republic), and clinical training will take place in society and in the Clalit Medical Services Hospitals, which has already announced its support for the project.

The idea faced an opposition arising from questions whether Youssefal Hospital and Clalit clinics in Eilat are high enough to train doctors, whether the medical school can attract good lecturers enough from a university environment, whether possible, or even true, to bring foreign students to school, and whether students will not be cut off from a university environment in a way to train them.

Just a few years ago, all training programs for foreign medicine students in Israel were canceled. The decision was made to preserve medical studies, especially clinical areas, available to Israeli students. For his part, Cohen says that in his plan, foreign students will undergo clinical training abroad, and not in the clinical fields in Israel at the expense of local students. At the present time, it is not clear at all whether it is possible to attract foreign students to Israel.

Regarding Yoseftal Hospital and the ability to attract lecturers to the Medical College, Cohen believes that these things are complementary. He believes that he will be able to give doctors, especially those who have recently retired from the medical system, or even young doctors who will have a unique opportunity to teach, an attractive package consisting of teaching, working in Yoseftal for a few days a week, thus upgrading the hospital in parallel with the activity of the College of Medicine. “These things must develop side by side,” he says.

Competition with Cohen is a project for the University of Ben Gurion in Negif, Perseva, which suggests the transfer of some of its pre -clinical medical studies to Eyilat, while clinical studies will take place at Ben Gurion University, and clinical training will be at Soroka Hospital in Percifa or Asota Hospital in Ashdod, as is the case at the present time. This is an easier project to do, and does not raise the previously mentioned objections, but its impact on Eilaat will be less.

Eilat Eli Lankri may support Cohen’s plan, and sees it as part of a more ambitious medical plan that includes a large rehabilitation center and a leading plastic surgery clinic that encourages medical tourism. Eilaat is currently medically deprived, and the average life expectancy in the city is among the lowest rates in Israel, among other things due to low access to complex medical services.

It was published by Globes, Israel Business News – En.globes.co.il – on September 10, 2025.

© Copy Publish Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. , 2025.