Brief History of College of Medicine and Health Sciences

The current Gondar College of Medicine and Health Sciences was formerly called Gondar Public Health College and Training Center (PHC and TC). It was first established in 1954, with structured administrative, financial and curricular setups to improve the health conditions in Ethiopia. The establishment of this training center was jointly made by USAID, WHO, the Ministry of Public Health and UNICEF in October 4/1954.

The objective of the training center was to train a team of middle level health professionals consisting of health officers, nurses and sanitarians who would provide an integrated curative, preventive and promotive health services for the rural people of Ethiopia. After establishment and organization of all the necessary teaching facilities, the criteria of selection of students from the different high schools of the country was fixed by PHC & TC for three different categories of health trainings, including health officers, community nurses and sanitarians.

In 1961, the PHC & TC became a part of the HaileSilassie I University (HSIU). In 1978, the Derg Government announced the establishment of the medical faculty in the Gondar College of Public Health and Training Center by discontinuing the training of the health officers and community nurses.

In the academic year of 1980/81, the name, “Gondar collage of Medical Sciences (GCMS)” was given to the public health college. A bilateral agreement between the Addis Ababa University (AAU) and the Karl Marx University (KMU) in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was then signed under the supervision of the respective Higher Commission for Education to develop the GCMS. In due course, attributing much to the German institutions and experts, the college claimed its autonomy (from AAU) in 1992.

The college has a referral teaching hospital with 350 beds serving more than 5 million people. And now is constructing one new ophthalmology hospital, TB ward and one G+5 hospital to expand its capacity of service.

Currently, the College of Medicine and Health Sciences structured with 4 schools under it, namely, School of Medicine, School of Public Health, School of Health Sciences and School of Pharmacy. Under these four schools there are 35 departments, 11 undergraduate and 8 postgraduate study programs. Additionally, the college has 217 Teaching/Academic technical assistants and 267 supporting staffs.

GCMS is currently educating more than 4200 students and the teaching process is delivered by 289 instructors. From whom 94 are with a post of lecturer and 45 are with a post of assistant professor and above including three professors. The rest are below a lecturer post.

The college has collaborations with more than 16 international universities and institutes that will support both the clinical service and the academic wing either financially, technically, by material delivery and/or through academic staff capacity development. Some of these collaborative universities are: University of OSLO, University of Leicester, and Oregon state University, Leipzig Medical faculty, Wright State University, Addis Continental Institute of Public Health, CDC, JHPIEGO, CBRP, DRHP, ORBIS International Ethiopia and others.

In its future plan the college has planned to accept more than 5000 students. And will open post graduate programs in Tropical and Infectious Diseases, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Gyn-Obs, Clinical Chemistry and Hematology and will continue to strengthen the existing links and work on it to be a center of excellence in different fields of study.

The Evolution of Gondar’s Public Health College and Training Center :Che-Che-la from an Italian ConsularOffice to a Medical College.

Attachments:

Gondar Chechela.pdf

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