Israel’s fifth medical school - the first in nearly four decades - opens on Sunday in Safed. Bar-Ilan University will officially open its Faculty of Medicine in the Galilee in the city of Safed, in the presence of the President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his whole cabinet, regional council heads, Galilee hospital directors, Council for Higher Education leaders and prominent business people.
The event will begin at 11 a.m. with a ceremony marking the opening of the 2011-12 academic year. Speakers will include Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar; chairman of the Council for Higher Education’s planning and budgeting committee Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg; Bar-Ilan University president Prof. Moshe Kaveh and rector Prof. Haim Taitelbaum; and Prof. Ran Tur-Kaspa, the new dean of of the faculty of medicine.
The medical school is located on a temporary campus, but a new, permanent one will replace it. The enterprise is expected not only to bring high-quality and students and faculty to the Galilee but also to raise the standard of medicine in hospitals in the region, as clinical studies will be held there. Dozens of returning Israelis who completed the first few years of theoretical studies will already begin their clinical work now, while the rest will begin their theoretical work in Safed.