In 2011, the hospital signed agreements with St. George's University in London and with the University of Nicosia (Cyprus) to train medical students for a fee of 25,000 euros per student and to award them MBBS degrees. Deans of several Israeli medical schools, including Yosef Mekori of the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, and Rivka Carmi, president of the Ben-Gurion University, criticised the programme, claiming it would hurt the quality of medical education received by Israeli students and harm medical care in Israel.[25]