“Corona vaccine is scarce in Iran and its injection is non-transparent and for insiders”

The Secretary General of the Nurses' Home says that a small amount of the coronavirus vaccine has arrived, and that its distribution is not transparent, and that "insiders" are given priority. At the same time, the situation in many cities is red, and the staff of Behesht Zahra in Tehran sometimes work three shifts.

Mohammad Reza Sharifi Moghadam, Secretary General of the Iranian Nursing Home, criticized the Iranian Ministry of Health and told Rokna News Agency that both the corona vaccine has entered the country in small quantities and the conditions for distributing these vaccines are inappropriate, and "we have repeatedly witnessed people becoming insecure and untrustworthy when receiving the vaccine."

He stressed that if officials "didn't have sand in their shoes, they would have provided transparent vaccination statistics."

In its report, Rokna News Agency cited official statistics from the Ministry of Health, Treatment and Medical Education, which show that in addition to the 100,000 doses of the joint Iranian-Cuban vaccine that entered Iran for clinical trials, 1,665,000 doses of the coronavirus vaccine have also arrived in Iran “for injection into the target population.” However, according to the latest statistics and recent statements by Iraj Harirchi, Deputy General of the Ministry of Health, “so far, 590,000 people in Iran have been vaccinated against coronavirus in the first phase.”

The Secretary General of the Iranian Nursing Home has said that if there was a transparent vaccination process in Iran, “all information about vaccine recipients, including their jobs, should be recorded to accurately track who in each job group has been vaccinated against the coronavirus.” He criticized the authorities for not providing any specific statistics in this regard.

Death of young nurses

According to Sharifi Moghadam, about 700,000 people work in Iran's healthcare sector. This includes health workers, medical assistants, nurses, doctors, laboratory experts, and people who work in hospitals, clinics, health homes, nursing homes, and other healthcare centers. He asked why, of the nearly 1.7 million doses of vaccine imported to Iran, "30 percent of the medical staff have not yet been vaccinated against COVID-19?"

According to him, since the beginning of this year, seven nursing staff in the provinces of Mazandaran, Khuzestan, Hormozgan, Khorasan Razavi, Kohgiluyeh, and Boyer Ahmad have died from COVID-19, most of whom were young and worked mainly in the government sector. He told Rokna: “If it weren’t for the Ministry of Health’s delay in providing the COVID-19 vaccine and distributing it to medical staff, these people’s lives would not have been lost.”

He also criticized why medical staff in Iran, especially nurses who are on the front lines of dealing with coronavirus patients, have not been given priority in receiving the coronavirus vaccine, saying that less than 50 percent of this section of medical staff has received the coronavirus vaccine, "and this shows that prioritization in vaccine distribution has not been observed."

The preference of the hospital shareholder family over the nurse

In addition to the lack of transparency in vaccine distribution, in some hospitals, especially in the private sector, there have been "many violations in the distribution of the coronavirus vaccine," and the priorities announced by the National Headquarters for Combating Coronavirus have not been taken into account.

Sharifi Moghadam criticized the poor supervision of vaccine distribution, especially in private hospitals, and said: "It has been reported from several private hospitals in Tehran that part of the vaccine quota intended for medical staff was injected into shareholders, hospital officials, their families, doctors' secretaries, and family members of specialists."

Chinese vaccine for nurses, Indian for doctors

Not only have some been given points in the way the vaccine is distributed, but there has also been a difference between nurses and doctors in the type and quality of the vaccine they receive. The Secretary General of the Iranian Nurses' Association has said that the situation for nurses in the public sector is no better than in the private sector, and he pointed to a public hospital in Hormozgan province where some nurses "were injected with the Chinese vaccine when they came to receive the coronavirus vaccine, but the doctors received the Indian vaccine."

Trial of the Minister of Health

Payam Tabarsi, a member of the scientific committee to combat the coronavirus, told Rokna News Agency that all medical staff across Iran will receive the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine by the end of April. The Secretary General of the Iranian Nursing Home considered this promise unlikely to be fulfilled, while emphasizing that if “there was a will to provide and properly distribute the coronavirus vaccine,” all medical staff would have been vaccinated much earlier.

In his opinion, the Ministry of Health “should have prepared the vaccine from scratch and completed the vaccination of medical personnel a few months ago.” For this reason, he also “accuses the Minister of Health of being involved in the deaths of medical personnel.”

He considered the government and the Ministry of Health's inaction in providing and distributing vaccines a factor in the victimization of nurses in recent months, and mentioned Iran as one of the countries with the highest statistics in the world regarding the deaths of nurses due to the coronavirus.

He called Health Minister Saeed Namaki "the cause of these nurses' deaths" and said that even if the nurses' families do not complain to the minister, "he should still be tried."

The number of coronavirus victims in Tehran has reached three digits.

According to Sima Sadat Lari, spokesperson for the Ministry of Health, 24,760 new COVID-19 patients have been identified in Iran in the past 24 hours, and 291 patients have lost their lives in the same period.

According to these statistics, the total number of coronavirus patients in Iran has reached 2,118,212. A total of 65,055 people have lost their lives due to this disease.

The situation in some cities, including Tehran, is very dire. Saeed Khal, CEO of the Behesht Zahra Organization, announced that the death toll from the coronavirus in Tehran has reached three digits in the last two days, reaching 100. He told the Islamic Republic Radio and Television: “My colleagues in the Behesht Zahra Organization are working in two shifts, sometimes three shifts, and we have put ourselves in a full crisis mode for the coming days.”

According to Saeed Khal, "In the 50-year history of Behesht Zahra, these conditions have never been repeated, and every day, "750 people in the purification, burial, stewards, computer site, transportation of the deceased from the city of Tehran, and transportation of the deceased to various cities in Iran" are on standby and active.

Source: DW