Haramaya University

Health and medical education

Haramaya's health training is based in Harar, not on the main campus near Haramaya town. The College of Health and Medical Sciences (CHMS) was established in September 1996, as the Faculty of Health Sciences, and moved to its own campus in Harar in October 2003, about 23 km from the main campus. It is one of the university's largest academic units. The college reports teaching 1,770 undergraduates, 593 master's students, 120 residents and 53 PhD students in four schools and two departments, and runs its own journal, the East African Journal of Health and Biomedical Sciences.

Medicine

The School of Medicine was established in 2008 (Gregorian calendar), according to its own page. An earlier Bloom Medicine article, based on other sources, gave 2007, so the start year varies by a year depending on the source. The school says it has graduated more than 1,100 doctors and 42 specialists. It enrols about 617 undergraduate medical students and 124 residents. Students are chosen for medicine after their first freshman semester. Selection weighs the national entrance exam, a departmental exam, student interest and diversity criteria.

Residents are admitted through the national residency matching exam. The college lists specialties in obstetrics and gynaecology, general surgery, internal medicine, paediatrics, emergency and critical care medicine, anaesthesiology, orthopaedics and trauma, and dermatovenereology. It also lists subspecialties in maternal-fetal medicine, urogynaecology and gynaecologic oncology.

Nursing and midwifery

The School of Nursing and Midwifery traces back to a nursing department opened in 1994 with a three-year diploma in public health nursing. The BSc followed in 2002, and the department became a school in 2008. The school reports 11 undergraduate programmes and 6 postgraduate programmes. Undergraduate options include comprehensive nursing, midwifery, paediatrics and child health nursing, neonatal nursing, emergency and critical care nursing and psychiatry, several with post-basic or summer routes for diploma holders. Postgraduate options include an MSc in Clinical Midwifery and a PhD in Nursing.

The school reports 529 regular undergraduates, 85 MSc students and 8 PhD students, with 96 academic staff. Its four skills laboratories serve as an OSCE centre for the national licensing exam for nurses and midwives. The International Confederation of Midwives profiled Haramaya's midwifery teaching in 2026.

Pharmacy, laboratory, public health and environmental health

• Pharmacy opened in 2007 (1999 E.C.) and took its first students the next year. It offers the generic and post-basic B.Pharm and MSc degrees in clinical pharmacy and pharmacology.
• Medical Laboratory Sciences dates to the 1996 Faculty of Health Sciences. It offers the BSc (regular, post-basic and summer), six MSc programmes and PhDs in medical microbiology and in tropical and infectious diseases. Some of these run jointly with the Armauer Hansen Research Institute.
• Public Health started with a BSc in 1996 and became a school in 2017/18. It offers BSc degrees in public health, health informatics and family health, eight MPH tracks, a PhD in Public Health and a Doctor of Public Health. It reports 76 instructors, including 5 professors.
• Environmental Health Sciences (founded 1998, BSc since 2004) adds master's programmes in climate change and health, occupational health and safety, and water supply and sanitation.

The university also runs the Kersa Health and Demographic Surveillance System, set up in 2007 in Kersa district, East Hararghe. It is a field site for student and staff research.

Teaching hospital

Clinical teaching is at Hiwot Fana Comprehensive Specialized Hospital in Harar, which the university took over for teaching in 2010. The School of Medicine says it serves a catchment of more than 6 million people; the ICM profile said more than 5 million. In September 2026 the university announced an expansion project worth more than 75 million birr for a paediatric neurosurgery centre of excellence at the hospital. We did not find a published bed count or hospital phone number.

Accreditation and rankings

None of Haramaya's programmes appeared on the Education and Training Authority's new online accreditation register when we checked (13 entries nationwide). This is common because the register is new. We could not check the World Directory of Medical Schools, which blocked automated access. EduRank ranks Haramaya 6th in Ethiopia for medicine, nursing and public health research and 5th for pharmacology.

The institution

Haramaya began as the Imperial Ethiopian College of Agricultural and Mechanical Arts, set up under a US Point Four agreement with Oklahoma State University. Its first students arrived in 1954, and Emperor Haile Selassie formally inaugurated it on 10 January 1958. It became a university of agriculture in 1985 and added faculties of education and health in 1995/96. The name changed from Alemaya to Haramaya University in February 2006. It was one of the eight research universities in the Ministry of Science and Higher Education's 2020 classification.

The main campus is near Haramaya town in East Hararghe, about 510 km east of Addis Ababa between Dire Dawa and Harar. The university's history page says it runs 211 regular programmes. Other campuses include the Haramaya Institute of Technology and the veterinary campus.

Regular undergraduates are placed through the national system after the higher education entrance exam. Medicine is chosen after the first freshman semester. Postgraduate and summer programmes have their own calls. We did not find published tuition fees.

Before you apply

• Health students live and study in Harar, not on the Haramaya main campus. Check where you will be housed in your freshman year.
• The CHMS contact number printed on the college site (+25102566674) seems to be missing digits. Email chms@haramaya.edu.et or call the main line instead.
• If you hold a diploma, ask about the post-basic and summer routes in nursing, midwifery, pharmacy and laboratory science. Haramaya runs more of them than most universities.
• Ask the Education and Training Authority or the college for the current accreditation letter for your programme.
• For an MPH or PhD, ask whether your thesis can use the Kersa surveillance site data.