In recent days, the death of a teenager once again exposed healthcare deficiencies in Sistan and Baluchestan in southeastern Iran; shortages of hospital beds, doctors, ambulances, medicine, and blood in underserved areas sometimes delay treatment and at times cost patients their lives.
On August 17, 13-year-old Melika Hemmatzadeh, from the village of Dasak, was taken to Nikshahr’s 22 Bahman Hospital after being stung by a scorpion; however, along the way, a doctor, ambulance, platelets, and ultimately an ICU bed were unavailable. According to Melika’s father, the village health center was closed because there was no doctor, the city of Bent had no ambulance, and the platelets she needed were available neither at Nikshahr Hospital nor in Chabahar. Melika suffered a seizure at 10 p.m. and subsequently died.
Saeed Baluchi, head of the Nikshahr Health and Medical Services Network, attributed the death to “a delay of several hours in seeking medical care,” but at the same time confirmed that a pediatrician had determined that Melika urgently needed intensive care and that she was not transferred to the ICU because there was no available bed; efforts to transfer her to a better-equipped facility also proved unsuccessful. This account offers no response to the family’s claim that they waited for hours to obtain the platelets she needed.
Meanwhile, according to Baluchi, since March 22, 2026, 2,771 cases of scorpion stings and five resulting deaths have been recorded in the Bent district, the Kuchink and Abgah areas, and other rural regions; figures that underscore the importance of rapid access to medical care.
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1,600 Missing Beds; Absent Doctors and Nurses
In southern Sistan and Baluchestan, there are only about 350 active beds for the population covered by six counties, while a shortage of more than 1,600 beds has been reported. At the same time, the province has been reported to have 6.5 doctors per 10,000 people, while the shortage of nurses has also been described as critical; in many counties, even specialties such as obstetrics and gynecology, pediatric surgery, and anesthesiology are unavailable. These shortages exist amid a situation in which the province has at least about 3,500 thalassemia patients, each of whom typically needs two units of blood per month.
Sistan and Baluchestan has faced blood shortages for years, and given the high number of thalassemia patients, declining blood supplies directly harm these patients. Sometimes a patient goes to the hospital for a transfusion, but no blood is available and they have to return home; at other times, a patient who needs two units of blood receives only one and must wait to receive the remainder.
80 Million Rials for Monthly Medication
For patients, however, the crisis does not end there. Medication shortages are also part of the same chain. Desferal, a medication used for iron chelation that has now returned to the market after months, is currently available only at a price of 80 million rials. This affects patients who cannot even afford the cost of traveling from their villages to cities, and even if they somehow manage to purchase it at this price, while a patient needs about 120 doses per month for iron chelation, at this price they can obtain only 80 doses. The high cost of medications such as supplements, calcium, heart medications, and drugs for osteoporosis has also left some patients unable to continue taking them.
This province has faced years of accumulated and multilayered deprivation in healthcare; shortages of hospital beds, specialist doctors, nurses, diagnostic and medical equipment, ambulances, medicines, and blood products, alongside a weak referral system.
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In southern parts of the province, healthcare officials reported in November 2025 a shortage of more than 1,600 medical beds compared with about 350 active beds, highlighting the gap between existing healthcare capacity and the region’s population and geographic size.
A significant proportion of patients from rural and border areas are forced to travel to larger cities to receive specialized care; under such circumstances, referring a patient is not necessarily a routine step in the treatment process, and the treatment journey itself becomes an obstacle.
There Is a Hospital Building, but No Services
The problem is not whether a county has a hospital or not; “The issue is how many beds that hospital has, how many specialist doctors work there, what diagnostic equipment it has, and whether it has an operating room, ICU, and emergency services commensurate with the needs of the population of that area.”
The War Descends on Dilapidated Infrastructure
Sistan and Baluchestan’s healthcare system was already facing serious shortages before the war, and the recent war cannot be considered the starting point of these problems, but this crisis placed new pressure on the same dilapidated and inefficient infrastructure.
During the war, the Chabahar emergency medical base was reported among the damaged medical facilities, while disruptions to transportation, patient transfers, and the supply of medicine and blood placed additional pressure on the province’s healthcare system. Accounts regarding Chabahar’s Imam Ali Hospital were also contradictory. The state-run IRNA and ISNA news agencies denied that it had been damaged, but Fars reported that it had been hit by shrapnel and sustained “minor damage.” A few days later, IRNA reported that 40 billion tomans had been allocated for the hospital’s reconstruction, while the same report continued to identify the shortage of beds as one of the main problems in the south of the province.
No regular and transparent statistics are published on patients who have died because of delays in diagnosis or transfer, or the absence of specialized facilities, and documented cases are mostly limited to cases that media outlets or human rights organizations have been able to access.
Human rights reports have also documented the consequences of these delays, including the death of a 20-year-old woman in Nikshahr who, after being stung by a scorpion, was transferred to the hospital with a delay of about 24 hours and died after five days of hospitalization, as well as a patient in Chabahar who, after spending six days in the ICU without a definitive diagnosis, was transferred to Kerman and died after the infection spread.
A Patient Without an Identity Card Is a Patient Without Access
People without birth certificates and identity documents face more serious barriers to accessing public and healthcare services. When a patient encounters an identity-related barrier to accessing treatment, the lack of documentation can become part of the breakdown in the chain of healthcare deprivation. However, the lack of transparent statistics in this area also makes it difficult to assess the true extent of this deprivation.
A province may show increases in medical equipment and healthcare services in official statistics, but these figures do not necessarily explain the experience of a patient in a remote village who urgently needs medical care.
