[News] Morocco .. Why do medical students refuse to "integrate returnees from Ukraine"?

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https://www.msn.com/ar-ae/news/middleeast/المغرب-لماذا-يرفض-طلبة-الطب-إدماج-العائدين-من-أوكرانيا/ar-AAVnIr2?li=BB1ebCnc

 

 

A video clip circulating in Morocco, showing medical and pharmacy students voting against opening medical schools to Moroccan students fleeing Ukraine, sparked a great debate that turned into a war of words between the two sides.

The students strengthened their position with an official statement issued by the National Committee for Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmacy, in which they formulated the most prominent reasons that lead them to reject the option of integrating their counterparts returning from Ukraine into Moroccan universities.

 

There are more than 3,700 medical students out of the 8,400 students who were studying in Ukraine before the Russian military operation.

 

The Minister of Higher Education, Abdel Latif Mirawi, refused to comment on the ongoing controversy, and only said, in a brief statement to "Sky News Arabia", that "all students are our sons."

 

The minister preferred not to give any details until the final touches are put on the solutions that will be taken once and for all, in order to solve the students' problem.

 

The Moroccan official stressed that what is "indisputable" is that the future of students returning from Ukraine will not be lost.

 

It is expected that the Ministry of Education will hold a meeting, at the end of this month, with the deans of the faculties of medicine and pharmacy, and the national committee representing students, in order to consider possible solutions.

 

The ministry is currently working on enumerating students through an electronic platform that was launched recently, and is also working on communicating with universities in Ukraine's neighboring countries in order to consider the possibility of receiving Moroccan students.

 

clarify the situation

 

Commenting on the wave of criticism leveled by part of the Moroccans over the video, which was filmed at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in the city of Oujda, in eastern Morocco, Mohamed Al-Qassimi Alaoui, head of the National Committee for Students of Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmacy, confirms that the circulating clip was misunderstood.

 

He explained in a statement to "Sky News Arabia" that the students had discussed before that the "miserable" conditions experienced by the faculties of medicine and pharmacy, which make it difficult to receive an additional number of students.

 

The student representative, a dental student, reviews three “red lines” that cannot be crossed by inclusion. In this context, the students call on the government to respect the principle of equal opportunities, as Muhammad Qasimi Alawi explains that most of the students went to Ukraine, "after failing to pass the medical exams in Morocco, or because they were unable to obtain the total points eligible to pass the exam", including Those who were pursuing high school studies in the arts, and therefore their inclusion "would not be fair to students who entered universities in a well-deserved manner."

 

As for the second obstacle, it is represented, according to the same source, in what he describes as overcrowding, which university hospitals know at the level of training medical students, stressing that students trained in some hospital departments are forced to divide training days between them so that everyone can benefit. In this context, the student, who is continuing his studies in the sixth year, highlights that university hospitals cannot accommodate more than 3,700 additional students.

 

In Morocco, there are nine medical universities with more than twenty thousand students, most of whom do the training, which is necessary, in university hospitals.

 

Muhammad Qasemi Alvi asserts that the integration of the returnees from Ukraine under the current circumstances will have negative repercussions on "the quality of the performance of future doctors" and thus there will be "a danger to the health of the citizen."

 

The dental student sheds light on the difficult situation that students live in while they are waiting for the promises contained in the medical students’ agreement with the government, in 2017.

 

Among the most prominent pledges, is to increase the value of compensation provided to students in the last years of achievement, and to increase the number of universities.