Lower Bavaria is getting a medical campus – the Council of Ministers decided on Tuesday in Munich. Locations for the training of young medical professionals should be Passau, Landshut, Deggendorf, Straubing and – in the Upper Palatinate – Regensburg. The aim is to create a good 600 university places, said Science Minister Markus Blume (CSU) in a press conference after the cabinet meeting. He spoke of an “unlimited reason to be happy”.
The medical campus is part of Bavaria’s high-tech agenda, and the first part of the course, which includes basic and clinical-theoretical subjects, is said to be primarily at the University of Regensburg. The students should complete the second part equally at the Lower Bavarian clinic locations Deggendorf, Landshut, Passau and Straubing. The Niederbayern medical campus aims to improve medical care in Bavaria. According to the State Chancellery, additional medical study places have been created in recent years with the new medical faculty at the University of Augsburg and the medical campus in Upper Franconia, in line with the motto “education in the region for the region”. The University of Passau and the Technical University (TH) Deggendorf are also involved in medical training. A new center for digital medical training is also planned in Passau.
The medical campus was recently considered controversial among experts. As long as the living conditions in Lower Bavaria are “not seen as sufficiently attractive”, the approach will not bear fruit, there is “hardly any chance of sustainable structural support for the region,” according to a report by external experts. The experts feared that a second-class medical course would be created and international research impulses would not materialize. The deputy leader of the Greens parliamentary group in the state parliament, Verena Osgyan, called the findings from the report “devastating”.