TUMS Official Membership in the M8 Alliance

In this year’s World Health Summit (WHS), which was held on October 8, 2016 in Berlin, TUMS was elected by unanimous vote as the new member of the M8 Alliance of Academic Health Centers, Universities and National Academies, the only member from the MENA region. TUMS will be the only member from the MENA region.

Dr. Ali Jafarian stated that the M8 Alliance is a consortium that includes a group of pioneer world universities and cultural centers created in the 2009 World Health Summit. The mission of the m8 Alliance is to improve and develop relations and communications between top world universities.

Annually, the members of this Alliance choose the World Health Summit as a platform of presenting and pursuing this grand aim. The M8 Alliance strives to transform theoretical and fundamental research and experiments of the health arena into practical medical and health solution to tackle global health- and medical-related issues and challenges.

According to Dr. Jafarian, prior to TUMS’s recent membership, 23 members from Germany, Great Britain, the United States, Australia, Japan, Switzerland, Singapore, France, Canada, Taiwan, Portugal, Italy, Uganda and China comprised the M8 Alliance.

The joining of TUMS to the M8 Alliance, as stated by Dr. Jafarian, started from a year ago and entered a more practical phase during the visit of Professor Detlev Ganten, President of the World Health Summit to Iran. Dr. Jafarian emphasized that the recent membership of TUMS, which shows the great potential of this university, can connect TUMS better than ever to the global network of health decision- and policy-makers which in turn enable the university to pay its due contribution to the world progress of health and medicine.

The World Health Summit 2016 was held at the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin and saw the presence of 1800 individuals from 90 countries. As part of this event, Dr. Jafarian addressed an audience in the form of a speech on the role of the private sector in the general health coverage of the Iranian population. Moreover, on the sidelines, the TUMS Chancellor had several meetings with high-ranking university and government officials.