Singapore’s health ministry has cut in half the number of Canadian schools on its list of approved medical schools for overseas study.

In a statement released on Apr. 18, the agency said that it occasionally reviews the list of medical schools with registrable basic medical qualifications in order to “meet the changing health care needs of Singaporeans and to ensure that they quality of overseas-trained doctors practicing in Singapore remains high.”

Seven Canadian schools were dropped from the list. They are the University of Ottawa, Queen’s University, the University of Western Ontario, the University of Saskatchewan, Universite de Laval, Dalhousie University and the Universite de Sherbrooke.

The health ministry said in its statement that these changes will go into effect in 2020. That means that Singaporean students who are studying at those schools or those students who have already been accepted would be exempted from the changes.

It is unclear how many Singaporeans currently study at the medical schools removed from the list, but it is likely to be small. Laval’s medical school, for instance, accepted only 1.2 per cent of foreign applicants in 2016, the most recent year for which data is available.

In total, the health ministry whittled its list of approved medical schools down from 160 to 103.