Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya


The Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya is one of the thirteen faculties of the University of Malaya. It was officially established in September 1962 after the establishment of the university's Kuala Lumpur campus; it was the first medical school established in Malaysia. The faculty is well-known for its medical education and research, especially in the discovery of the Nipah virus. The faculty is widely regarded as the top medical school in Malaysia, being placed at No. 101–150 in medicine in the QS World University Rankings 2020; this makes it the highest ranked medical school in Malaysia and the third highest in Southeast Asia.

History

The Faculty of Medicine was first established in Singapore as the Straits Settlements and the Federated Malay States Government Medical School in 1905, which trained physicians from present day Singapore and Malaysia. It was located within a former women's mental asylum at Sepoy Lines. The start of this medical school was significant in two ways. It trained local people to bring Western medicine to the population, and it was supported by merchants who took advantage of the tax exemptions to give generously to public causes. One notable donor was Tan Jiak Kim, a prominent Straits-born Chinese merchant. Another, Tan Chay Hoon, donated a building to the school in memory of his father, Tan Teck Guan. The Tan Teck Guan Building was built in 1911.
In 1921, the school was renamed the King Edward VII College of Medicine, after a donation from the Edward VII Memorial Fund. It was founded by Lim Boon Keng. In 1926, the College of Medicine Building was built to house the college in addition to the Tan Teck Guan Building. The dental school was founded shortly after.
During World War II, the college operated during the Japanese occupation of Singapore, but some people were killed. The first casualty was a fourth-year medical student based at Tan Tock Seng Hospital who was fatally wounded during the Battle of Singapore. While his friends were burying him, they were spotted by Japanese soldiers and eleven were killed on the spot. The dead are commemorated by the SGH War Memorial.
In 1949, the KECM merged with Raffles College to form the Singapore campus of UM. The medical school became the Faculty of Medicine of UM, and students in Malaysia wishing to study medicine would have to go to the campus in Singapore. In 1962, UM split into UM and the University of Singapore, with the medical school in Singapore coming under the University of Singapore, while the UM in Kuala Lumpur established the present faculty. The founder Dean of the Faculty was Tan Sri Emeritus Prof Dr. Thamboo John Danaraj. On 5 May 2005, T.J. Danaraj Medical Library was named in memory of the Dean.

Admissions and programmes

The faculty provides several undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in the field of medical and health sciences. These include:
;Undergraduate
;Postgraduate
The faculty is made up of the following departments:
;Medical Education
;Pre-Clinical
;Para-Clinical
;Clinical
The Faculty includes the following research centres:
YearRankValuer
2018301–400Times Higher Education World University Rankings
2018151–200QS World University Rankings
2019251–300Times Higher Education World University Rankings
2019101–150QS World University Rankings
2020176–200Times Higher Education World University Rankings
2020101–150QS World University Rankings

Publications

Journals

  1. Journal of University of Malaya Medical Centre
  2. Biomedical Imaging and Intervention Journal

    Organisations

  3. University of Malaya Students' Union - Faculty of Medicine
  4. University of Malaya Medical Society
  5. * The UM MedSoc has its roots to the Medical Society that was first formed in 1949 at the University of Malaya in Singapore, headed by Mr Goon Sek Mun. Subsequently after the separation of Singapore from Malaysia, the present-day Faculty of Medicine was set up in the Kuala Lumpur campus of University of Malaya and a separate Medical Society was set up. It remains as the oldest medical student organisation and society in the medical fraternity in Malaysia. Till this date, the UM MedSoc has frequently collaborated with the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine's Medical Society to organise events for its members across Malaysia and Singapore, namely the MUNUS Games and most recently, MUUINUS in 2020, which was an online e-gaming competition held between the two medical schools, with an addition of University of Indonesia.

  6. Notable alumni

King Edward VIII College of Medicine (1925–49)