"Injured Girls of Shinabadi" Protest Against Not Being Sent Abroad for Continued Treatment

The "Shinabadi Girls", complaining about their treatment process, criticized the "unfulfilled" promises made by relevant officials, including the Minister of Health, in this regard, and demanded that they be sent abroad to continue treatment.

Twelve female students who suffered burns five years ago when an oil heater caught fire at a primary school in Shinabad village, Piranshahr, West Azerbaijan Province, spoke to the ILNA news agency. The incident left two dead and 27 injured.

Sima, one of the girls, said in this regard, "Our doctor says that if we are here, we might recover later, but abroad, because of the better facilities, we will recover faster."

According to him, "Eight months ago, Mr. Hashemi (the Minister of Health) promised us and signed a letter that equipment would be brought to the hospital for us, but this did not happen."

ILNA News Agency also published a picture of a letter dated July 12, 2017, which, according to a meeting minutes, was "addressed to Mr. Rezaei, head of the budget department of the Ministry of Health's Deputy for Health and head of Fatemeh Zahra Hospital. The equipment was supposed to be delivered to this hospital within two weeks, but this has not happened to date."

His father also said that over the past five years, "the treatment and medical facilities in the country have not been adequate for our children. If they had been adequate, the children's joints and fingers would not have become dry."

He requested a meeting with President Hassan Rouhani, adding that perhaps through this meeting, "we will send the children abroad."

As Sima's father said, two years ago, "At the burn congress, the Minister of Health had lunch with Sima and said that if necessary, each of the children would be sent abroad. But unfortunately, it was only a promise."

He added that "more than 150 surgeries have been performed on each of the children" and that after the "one billion and 360 million tomans" allocated for the treatment of these girls was exhausted, "the children's treatment is progressing with difficulty."

Another of the girls, whose name was not mentioned, also said that due to a lack of funding, the equipment used in their surgeries at "Fatemeh Zahra Hospital, which is a government-teaching hospital," lacks proper quality, and as a result, the treatment process frequently encounters problems.

She also mentioned the "dry joints" of her and other girls' hands, adding, "We can't do anything with our hands. We study, but it's not going well; we're constantly commuting to Tehran, and the teacher no longer repeats the lesson. That's why our grades are dropping."

Esrin, another of Shinabadi's daughters, also criticized the unfulfilled promises of the Minister of Health, asking whether "if it were her own daughter, would she have operated on her in Iran with this equipment?"

The father of Nadia, another of these girls, also said that "because the cost to the hospital is high, surgeons do not perform the operation personally and leave it to assistants."

The father of another girl also referred to the "educational" nature of Fatemeh Zahra Hospital, saying, "Assistants perform surgeries. Our children are not lab rats."

Another criticism from the parents of these girls is that Iran Insurance did not pay the full blood money for two of the deceased girls, and only paid half of it because they were women.

In December of this year, the lawyer for the Shinabadi girls wrote an open letter to Hassan Rouhani, criticizing discrimination in paying the blood money for students at this school because they are women, and calling for their full respect for their citizenship rights.

On the fifth anniversary of the incident, Hossein Ahmadiniaz wrote to Rouhani that "despite the promises made, half of the blood money" for Saria Rasoulzadeh and Siran Yeganeh, the two deceased students, has not been paid.

He added that in Iran, "gender is still the basis of blood money" and "this inequality has led to the violation of the rights of these girls and thousands of other girls in Iran."

According to the lawyer, while the Shinabadi girls' treatment process will continue for another 15 years, and they and their parents must endure the pain of traveling to Tehran and undergoing numerous surgeries, their rights and entitlements have not been paid.

He added: "I believe that citizenship rights will be realized when the rights of these oppressed girls are fully deposited and paid."

Shortly after this incident, Rasoul Khezri, a representative from Piranshahr in the parliament, said that according to the protocol approved by the government, all costs related to plastic surgery, life insurance, and blood money for the Shinabadi and Durudzan students were borne by the government.

That year, the Arman newspaper also reported on the "amputated fingers of three of the injured in the fire at Shin Abad Elementary School" and wrote that "the critically ill students are still in the hospital," but that "sending a number of the injured abroad for further treatment has also been deemed unnecessary."

Source: Radio Farda