NMC to build $2bn medical university in Abu Dhabi

NMC to build $2bn medical university in Abu Dhabi

The UAE’s first medical school, Dubai Medical College for Girls, opened 28 years ago and pioneered medical education 

for women

edited by kcontents 

The university will have a health science 

school, a medical research centre and teaching hospitals. 

by Yasmin Al Heialy on Jun 29, 2016 

NMC will be building $2 billion Abu Dhabi’s first medical university in honour of UAE’s Founding Father, Sheikh Zayed, its CEO has announced.

Open to Emiratis and expatriates, the new university will be run in conjunction with Duke University in North Carolina or the University of California.

Bavaguthu Raghuram Shetty, Executive Vice-Chairman and CEO of Abu Dhabi-based NMCHealthcare said he “made [his] fortune here and [he] owes it all to the blessings of Sheikh Zayed” adding that it was Sheikh Zayed’s dream to provide affordable, high-quality medical care and education in the country.

He plans to invest “at least $2 billion” in the full project and hopes to receive students from the GCC as well as from overseas, The National reported.

Shetty hopes the university will be ready to accept students in 2017, depending on the license.

“I have been working for six years to realise his dream and I am close to achieving it and honouring his wishes by building this university. It is the least I can do for a man who has done so much for everyone,” he added.

Shetty described Sheikh Zayed as his father, mentor and guru. “The day he died, the whole world mourned.”

Mounir Soliman, assistant vice-chancellor at UC San Diego, said they were “ready to share our experience and expertise to develop a state-of-the-art research-based medical university in the UAE."

“We see that there is a great opportunity for building an institution for education and research [in the UAE].”

The university, he said, will allow the capital to “transform health care and to build on science and research that is very much needed in that part of the world."

The university will have a health science school, a medical research centre and teaching hospitals, he pointed out

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