Wollo University

Health and medical education

Wollo University's College of Medicine and Health Sciences (CMHS) is based on its own Tertiary Care Campus, separate from the main Dessie campus. It is linked to what the university calls the Wollo Tertiary Care and Teaching Hospital. Health sciences is one of the university's three designated centres of excellence.

History

According to an archived version of the college's page, CMHS was established in 2007 with four programmes: Nursing, Environmental Health, Medical Laboratory Sciences and Pharmacy. Public Health, Medicine and Midwifery were added later. By 2017/18 the college reported 16 undergraduate and 10 postgraduate programmes, including two medical specialties.

The World Directory of Medical Schools (WDOMS) gives 2012 as the year MD teaching began. Its ECFMG note lists graduation years "2017 – Current". That means graduates from 2017 onwards can apply for ECFMG certification, the route to US licensing exams, provided they meet the other requirements.

What the college offers today

The college is organised into six education and service directorates: Medicine, Nursing and Midwifery, Biomedical Science, Pharmacy, Medical Laboratory, and Public Health. The university's programme list for CMHS includes:

• Undergraduate: Medicine, Anesthesia, five nursing BScs (Comprehensive, Surgical, Emergency and Critical Care, Pediatrics and Child Health, Psychiatry), Midwifery, Pharmacy, Medical Laboratory Sciences, Public Health, Environmental Health, Health Informatics, and Occupational Health and Safety.
• Specialties: General Surgery, Internal Medicine, Gynecology and Obstetrics, Pediatrics and Child Health, and Orthopedics and Trauma Surgery. The university's overview counts five specialty programmes in total.
• Clinical master's: MSc in Clinical Midwifery and MSc in Integrated Emergency Surgery and Obstetrics.
• Nursing master's: adult health, maternal and reproductive health, pediatric and child health, and integrated clinical, community and mental health nursing.
• Pharmacy master's: clinical pharmacy, pharmacology, social and administrative pharmacy, and pharmaceutical analysis and quality assurance.
• Laboratory master's: medical microbiology, hematology and immunohematology, and tropical and infectious diseases.
• Public health master's: a wide set of MPH and MSc tracks, among them general public health, epidemiology and biostatistics, reproductive and family health, nutrition, health service management, health promotion, environmental health, water, sanitation and hygiene, and health informatics.

The Medicine directorate lists education and service units in other specialties, including ophthalmology, ENT, dermatology, psychiatry, dental and maxillofacial surgery, emergency and critical care, radiology, family medicine, oncology and pathology. These are departments, not necessarily residency programmes.

Clinical midwifery

Wollo is one of seven universities that ran the MSc in Clinical Midwifery in 2022. This programme trains midwives to perform caesarean sections. In a 2022–23 study of the programme, Wollo had the second-largest student group after the University of Gondar.

Accreditation and rankings

Wollo's programmes did not appear in the Education and Training Authority's new online accreditation register when we checked. The register listed only 13 programmes nationwide, so absence is not evidence of a problem, but you should ask for the certificate.

Wollo does not appear on EduRank's subject lists for medicine, nursing, public health, pharmacology or OB-GYN in Ethiopia.

The institution

Wollo University's own site says it was established in 2005 as one of the "second generation" public universities. It is now classed as an applied-sciences university. It started with a single Faculty of Education and added business and economics, informatics and engineering soon after.

The university now has three campuses:

• Dessie main campus: eight colleges and schools, among them agriculture, business, natural sciences, social sciences, education, arts, law and veterinary medicine;
• Kombolcha Institute of Technology in Kombolcha;
• Tertiary Care Campus: the College of Medicine and Health Sciences.

The university says it has more than 20,000 students on over 83 undergraduate programmes, 134 postgraduate programmes (including 7 PhDs) and 5 specialty programmes.

Dessie is in the South Wollo Zone of Amhara Region, about 400 km from Addis Ababa, at 2,470–2,550 m above sea level.

Admission to regular undergraduate programmes follows national rules: completion of preparatory school and the pass mark on the national higher education entrance examination, with placement through the Ministry. Continuing-education admissions go through departments and the registrar. Wollo is 18th of 51 on uniRank's 2026 table and 35th on EduRank's overall list for Ethiopia.

Before you apply

• Confirm which campus you will study on. Health programmes are on the Tertiary Care Campus, not the main Dessie campus.
• Ask for ETA accreditation evidence for your exact programme, especially the newer BScs such as psychiatry nursing and occupational health.
• Specialty applicants: confirm the specialty is admitting this year. The university's own overview counts five specialty programmes, while the Medicine directorate lists many more departments.
• Contact details are thin. The college's own contact page carries placeholder text. Use the main line (+251 33 311 5224) or info@wu.edu.et, and ask to be put through to CMHS.
• The P.O. Box differs between sources (1145 on the university's archived site, 208 for the medical school in WDOMS). Confirm before posting documents.