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.