The Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Sierra Leone, Brig. Gen. Prof. Foday Sahr on Monday, 24 July 2023 signed a “Memorandum of Agreement” with the Country Director of the faith-based international non-profit charitable organization, Mercy Ships.

The trust of the agreement is a collaboration between USL and Mercy Ships for the training of healthcare professionals in the area of dental education. Under this arrangement, Sierra Leonean medical students at USL (COMAHS) would be pursuing doctoral degrees in Dental Surgery at the state-of-the-art Gamal Abdel Nasser University in Conakry, Guinea. In this regard, the first set of seven medical students would leave in October this year to commence a six-year training with the first year focusing mainly on intensive French language training. That would be followed by four years of dental training and another year of intensive clinical work at the Gamal Dental School.

According to the agreement, Mercy Ships would undertake to support the students both financially and administratively for successful completion of the programme plus travel costs.

On its part, the University of Sierra Leone would be responsible for supporting the potential candidates to obtain the prerequisites for enrolment at the Gamal Abdel Nasser University in Conakry, selecting students, and supporting them to acquire the necessary documentation, inter alia.

It should be noted that as part of the Vice-Chancellor’s “re-engineering” initiative at USL, a dentistry component has been established as part of the Faculty of Clinical Sciences, thus expanding the nomenclature to the Faculty of Clinical Sciences and Dentistry.