History and Facts
The first educational institution for Pharmacy in Egypt was founded in Abou-Zaabal
in 1827 as the School of Medicine and Pharmacy. The institution has then been transferred
to the Citadel area, then to Kasr El-Aini Street, its current situation, in 1837.
The first graduated pharmacists from this School were 25 students, in the year 1832,
and they studied for five educational years.
Later, in 1925, the School was affiliated together with the School of Medicine to
Fouad I University and became known as the Faculty of Medicine. In 1941, the higher
degrees for Master and Diploma were introduced, to be followed in 1951 by the introduction
of the Ph.D. degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences.
In 1955, a governmental decree was issued to establish a Faculty of Pharmacy as
an independent entity in its own right, after having been detached from its affiliation
with the Faculty of Medicine. By that time, Fouad I University had then become known
as Cairo University.
The duration of study was five years, at the very beginning, then only four years,
but was again extended to five, the first year of which was a preliminary one, designated
as the Preliminary Natural Sciences (PNS) year, where the student was taught basic
sciences at the Faculty of Science before being admitted to the Faculty of Pharmacy.
The statutes and curricula of the Faculty of Pharmacy witnessed many changes over
the years that followed. The ultimate statutory and curricular change was enforced
in the academic year 2003-2004, whereby the studies in the PNS year were merged
with the proper pharmacy studies and integrated into a 5-year study program to
be attended from day one at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University.