“Right now there’s no place [in the region] for [people graduating from medical school] to do the specialty training they need,” said Robert L. Thurer, the center’s chief academic officer.

This void of post-graduate training programs particularly hurts women, who comprise over 60 percent of medical school graduates and whose families customs make it difficult for them to travel abroad to continue their education, Thurer said.

It has not yet been decided whether graduates will receive Harvard degrees.

HMI will be “setting the standards for the care being provided, not providing the care itself. That’s an important distinction,” said HMI board member George E. Thibault.

Dubai’s political stability and relatively open society have uniquely positioned it to partner with organizations like Harvard attempting to improve health care in the Middle East.

“The reason Dubai is particularly attractive [is that] in a region with considerable need, Dubai is well positioned to become a regional center for both education and healthcare,” Crone said when the Dubai initiative began in 2003. “It in itself has an excellent infrastructure and is an open society with regards to accepting individuals of all race, color and creed.”

Dubai is the second largest of the seven kingdoms that compose the United Arab Emirates, a country situated just west of Saudi Arabia on the Persian Gulf. Dubai Healthcare City is located within the kingdom of Dubai.

Dubai Healthcare City was designed as a “free zone” within Dubai, making investors exempt from laws that would otherwise place restrictions on the level of international ownership of firms and the ability of those firms to take their profits out of the country.

—Staff writer Natalie I. Sherman can be reached at nsherman@fas.harvard.edu.