For several days, the agreement between the municipality of the city of Orléans (Loiret) and the faculty of medicine of Zagreb, in Croatia, has been debated. The universities of Orléans and Tours regret “not having been associated with this process”, in a press release dated January 28.
This agreement, which aims to train around fifty medical students from Orléans and Loiret, “will be based on compulsory entrance examinations in Zagreb, with bilingual education with an English majority”. This training will take place by videoconference, and the courses will be given “by professors from the Faculty of Medicine of Zagreb, as well as by doctors from the Regional Hospital Center of Orléans”.
The universities of Orléans and Tours fear “training at a discount” and “selection by money”. “The University of Zagreb is known for welcoming foreign students, for paid teaching in English”, they point out in this sense.
“The cost will be around 10,000 euros, but we are including the price of a private preparatory course because we want everyone to go to second year”, assured Florent Montillot, deputy mayor of Orleans in charge. of health.
“The choice of the Faculty of Medicine of Zagreb is important, first of all because the diplomas issued are recognized at European level so in France, moreover, the faculty is patented High Quality, additional guarantee of the level of education”, did he also defend, according to Orléans Métropole.
A solution against medical deserts
This partnership aims to fight against medical deserts, argues, moreover, the municipality. The agreement provides that “at the end of the course and in return for financial support from the City of Orléans in the form of a scholarship, the student will undertake to settle for a period at least five years in Orléans”.
An agreement signed with the Faculty of Medicine of Zagreb, whose training and diplomas are recognized by the EU, and therefore France. Faced with a medical desertification that will continue, we are providing a solution that will allow us to train more doctors for our territory. https://t.co/6ZTLPDSU90
—Serge Grouard (@SergeGrouard) January 27, 2022
Thus the mayor of Orléans, Serge Grouard, estimated on Twitter on January 27 that the agreement “provides a solution which will make it possible to train more doctors for their territory, in the face of a medical desertification which will continue”.
The Loiret is indeed facing a shortage of doctors: the department has 63.7 general practitioners per 100,000 inhabitants, against a national average of 123.8.
For the universities of Orleans and Tours, on the contrary, this solution does not respond “in any way” to the delicate subject of medical desertification. “We want local authorities to support public service and be able to invest massively in training provided by French universities rather than financing private training with public funds,” they emphasize.