In order to promote exchange between researchers from the Leiden University Medical Center (the Netherlands) and the University of Wurzburg Faculty of Medicine (Germany), the Nagasaki University School of Medicine established the NUMF Fund in September 2019, which covers travel and accommodation expenses for up to three months, for researchers sent from both universities. Under this fund, researchers from both universities have been hosted over a five-year span since April 2020.

The University of Wurzburg is the alma mater of Philipp F. B. von Siebold, who came to Nagasaki in 1823 as a Dutch physician assigned to Dejima and was the first to teach the basic principles of Western medicine to Japanese doctors. After returning to the Netherlands, von Siebold studied law at Leiden University, and some of the articles he brought back from Japan are held at Leiden University.

The Nagasaki University School of Medicine was established in 1857 when the Dutch military doctor Pompe van Meerdervoort began teaching modern Western medicine to Matsumoto Ryojun and his students at the Nagasaki Magistrate’s Western Office Medical Training School. So, Matsumoto Ryojun and Pompe were later considered the founders of the Nagasaki University School of Medicine. There is also a connection with the Army Medical School in Utrecht, where Pompe studied medicine, which was attached to the Army Hospital in Leiden at the time of French rule in the Netherlands.

For these reasons, Nagasaki University has been in contact with these two universities for a long time and concluded an inter-university exchange agreement with Leiden University in 1989 and one with the University of Wurzburg in 1996. Many exchanges have taken place with the two universities, including researcher exchanges, joint research and student study programs.

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