Shortage of Specialist Doctors in Iran; Parliamentarian: Patients Given Three-Month Appointments
The spokesperson of the Education and Research Commission of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, stating that “we do not have a proper system for distributing doctors,” emphasized that in some regions patients are given appointments after several months.
AhmadHosein Fallahi, representative of Hamadan in the Islamic Consultative Assembly, said on Sunday, May 1st, in an interview with Farsi News Agency, referring to “conflict of interests” in decision-making for “decentralizing specialists from the country’s center”: “If people who have their own offices and organizational positions want to make decisions, we will not reach the desired result.”
He stressed the shortage of specialist doctors in Hamadan and the provision of “three-month and even four-month appointments for patients,” adding: “Specialist doctors are not present during holidays. For example, during the Nowruz holidays, there were no specialist doctors in the city for 20 days.”
Equitable access to doctors is one of the most important indicators in the effectiveness of the health system.
Previously, Tasnim News Agency, citing statistics from the Medical System Organization, reported that the doctor-to-population ratio in Iran is “11.6 doctors per 10,000 people, including general practitioners and specialists,” and is “much lower than other countries in the region and the world, such as Syria and Mongolia.”
According to Mohammad Raisa Zade, the head of Iran’s Medical System Organization, “the Ministry of Health does not have a budget to retain doctors in deprived areas” so that it can send them “to these areas with reasonable salaries and benefits,” and addressing the doctor shortage requires “serious action from the government and parliament.”
The health and medical situation in some regions of Iran has been reported as “dire.” As the governor of Sistan and Baluchestan said on July 1st, 2021, a city in this province with a population of 55,000 has only two general practitioners, some health and medical centers lack equipment, the distance between two health houses in this province is 1,250 kilometers, and “many health and medical positions in the province are vacant.”
Source: Voice of America
