Odessa National Medical University has become one of the best-in-class of higher educational institutions in Ukraine. Academician of the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine, laureate of the State Prize of Ukraine in the field of science and technology, Rector of ONMedU Valerii Zaporozhan (1994–2018) told about it in an interview to RBC-Ukraine.
“For the last 20 years, Odessa Medical University has gone a long way. No one helped us then, but we still found a way out. A tremendous amount of work has been done to make Odessa Medical University one of the best-in-class, to make it famous and respected in the world, ”he said.
Zaporozhian reminded that Odessa Medical University was the first in the country to return university clinics and start teaching in English. “Students from all over the world came to us, we started making money. But the money was spent not on a car park and repairings in the office of the rector, but on the reconstruction of the classrooms, technical re-equipment, purchase of equipment, ”he explained.
Today, as he said, Odessa Medical University has become a pioneer in competency training, when students learn to treat not fom a textbook, but on robotic simulators that completely imitate the patient.
“Our students are trained on Stanford-level equipment and have access to online libraries from the best medical universities in the world. Due to this, they are integrated into the international medical community from the first years, becoming specialists in America, European countries and Asia. Our graduates practice and create science schools around the world,”Zaporozhian said.
According to the academician, today the university provides high-quality educational services to students from 53 countries of the world and gets income for this, which “is enough not to ask for money from the budget for the purchase of the most up-to-date equipment – to train world-class specialists.”
According to Zaporozhian, the success and profitability of the university was the reason why a.i. head of MOH Ulyana Suprun tried to raid the university.
«Someone, apparently, told Suprun that at Odessa Medical University, you can make money and turn over a corruption scheme: to bring to the rectorate « her »people by raiding, put them on the stream, send money not for development, but for herself into her pocket. The second reason, as I noted, is to eliminate the objectionable, dissenting ones, to show everyone: you either support her or get eliminated,” Zaporozhan believes.