As the human resource crisis in Iran’s healthcare system continues and warnings about the consequences of medical staff emigration intensify, Behrouz Karkhanei, the president of Hamadan University of Medical Sciences announced that the province is facing a shortage of specialists and subspecialists in 48 medical fields.
The state-run Khabar Online website quoted Karkhanei as saying: “The per capita physician-to-population ratio in Hamadan province is 0.95%, whereas the national average is 1.6%.”
Meanwhile, the state-affiliated newspaper Etemad warned on January 10 about a shortage of skilled doctors in the next three years, reporting that training each general practitioner costs 10 billion rials (approximately $20,000 at market exchange rates).
The report emphasized that there is currently a severe shortage of doctors across all medical sectors in the country. Etemad further noted that between 2021 and 2024, due to “inaccurate and possibly biased assessments within the Ministry of Health, particularly during the previous administration,” student admissions in dentistry, pharmacy, and other medical fields increased by 20%. The newspaper argued that this increase far exceeded the country’s capacity and infrastructure.
Critics, however, argue that Etemad’s report is an attempt to shift blame onto the administration of former president Ebrahim Raisi (who died in a helicopter crash on May 19, 2024). They contend that the issues in the medical and nursing community are deeply rooted and extend beyond recent governmental decisions. The mass migration of nurses accumulated unpaid wages, years of labor protests, and the overall economic crisis affecting households serve as evidence of these longstanding problems.
In a related report on December 10, the state-run newspaper Jomhouri-e Eslami wrote that “in the first eight months of the current year (since March 21, 2024), another 4,500 healthcare workers have applied for migration.” This follows earlier reports stating that “7,000 doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel also applied for migration in 2023.”
Each Year, 1,500 Nurses Leave Their Jobs, 500 Emigrate from Iran
The government-affiliated outlet described the “exodus of 11,500 healthcare workers in less than two years” as a “bitter reality” and warned that “if this issue is not addressed soon, the country will face the decline of the medical community and its harmful consequences.” Experts have been sounding the alarm about this crisis for years.
Echoing these concerns, Mohammad Sharifi Moghadam, Secretary-General of the regime’s Nurses’ Association, recently stated that “given the current exchange rate of the dollar and the salaries of nurses in Iran, this profession is no longer attractive at all.”
According to Sharifi Moghadam, while nurses in European countries earn between $4,000 and $10,000 per month, Iranian nurses receive only $200 to $250, making low wages the primary driver of emigration.
