Background of International Health Sciences University ( IHSU ) Kampala

International Health Sciences University (IHSU) is fully licensed by the Uganda National Council for Higher Education. It received its provisional licence to operate on 3rd March 2008 and since then has had seven graduation ceremonies. It is a non-residential university offering health related programmes and trains students who will become tomorrow’s leaders in the provision and management of health services nationally and internationally. IHSU is currently situated on the third floor of International Hospital Kampala.

The university programmes have been specially designed to attract both current health care professionals and school leavers who wish to enter the health care professions either as practitioners or administrators. With the government’s initiative of setting up universal primary education and secondary education (UPE/USE) and the growth of secondary education, there has been a huge increase in the number of young people available for further training. While the need for the provision of further training is not disputed, it is generally agreed that there is an urgent need to rethink and refresh the professional courses currently on offer, especially those in the health sector, so as to make them attractive and relevant to a younger generation living in a very dynamic world. These people can move the health sector forward from a business-as-usual approach to producing creative ways to solve current problems whose solutions are not always fit for purpose. Examples are the growth of social networking and mobile phone technology in promoting health, and we at IHSU do not want students to be left behind the times as new innovations emerge.