Prime Minister Edi Rama’s remarks at the University of Medicine in Tirana on the beginning of the New Academic year 2019-2020: 

Hello everyone and thank you for your hospitality!

We chose this University to extend our congratulations on the beginning of a new academic year, because this is the University where, on the one hand, best-performing students have enrolled in, and on the other, where a journey begins to become part, I believe, of the most difficult front, because it’s not just about learning a craft and certain skills, but it’s about much more than that.

As Hippocrates has once said: “Wherever the art of Medicine is loved, there is also a love of Humanity.”

Certainly, this love relationship with humanity is not easy at all. You all know quite well that everyone expects a doctor to work his or her magic and when miracles do not work then the doctor should cope with stress and face a significant moral cost in relation to people and, moreover, you all know how tough is the challenge of establishing a healthy doctor-patient relation in our country.

However, I am very pleased that beyond what has been and will always remain the firm foundations of this University’s values – that is the long-time experience accumulated by professors over the years – we can publicly state today that the today’s state of the University is much better than it used to be in the past. Of course, a lot of concerted efforts remain to be made in order to further improve this University, but students who begin this academic year today will enjoy much better conditions than the last year’s students.

The Minister of Education highlighted a number of novelties that are already a reality in the country’s universities and they will be available to every student in the close organic relationship with the hospitality center. More novelties will follow.

We have done and will do whatever it takes to make sure that the University Hospital Centre successfully concludes an ongoing epochal transformation process. Undoubtedly, if we are to look at the current situation, there are still grey zones or significant gaps, but if we are to turn our head back to consider where we started this transformation, then everyone who knows the University Hospital Centre can openly and publicly admit that the situation has completely changed and it is a stark day and night difference compared to just five or six years ago.

The new modern surgery hospital will open soon, with the interaction with the University of Medicine being one of the important components. I am very confident that the new hospital will set a new standard in our national health care service, as well as it will help a lot to motivate whole health personnel and facilitate the know-how and experience transfer to the younger physicians.

The University itself is to be credited for a whole set of other novelties, yet it is crucially important that the communication and interaction continues through the Ministry of Health, which has made a serious commitment and has already developed a coordinated plan together with the University officials to complete whole logistics elements, which help students in their daily work.

I would like to express an appreciation to the whole University staff, lecturers and professors, who truly make up the of all this great work that has been done over the years. I would also like to congratulate all young boys and girls who begin the academic year today, ensuring them that we will do our best to do something more to improve the quality of life and conditions.

By extending this wish to each and every one of you, I would like to underline that we have already paved a new way to all best-performing students, who are seeking to contribute either to the institutions of this important sphere of life like health care or directly to the hospital practice. A significant number of best performing and excellent students have been already employed thanks to their performance results, without the need to go through other filters.

A new call for application has been launched recently, extending the range of potential candidates for job positions in the public administration to include excellent university graduates since 2015. Whoever graduates with excellent results from the university will have a door open in order to contribute to the public administration, without being forced to seek old-fashioned ways, because this direct and filter-free relation between the higher education institutions and the labor market and those who turn out to be best performing students after an intense study period will keep further strengthening.

Thank you very much!