Iraj Fazel, the head of the Surgeons Society and former Minister of Health of the Iranian regime, has warned about the shortage of specialist doctors in the country, stating that if this situation continues, we will inevitably have to import mushroom doctors.
Fazel, referring to the economic problems of students and the educational policies of the Iranian regime, said that the effects of these problems and policies are manifested in the form of “shortage of doctors and vacancies in medical specialties,” indicating that medicine in Iran has “declined.”
He stated, “Today, there is a serious problem with the acceptance of medical courses in the entrance exam or continuing education in medical specialties to the extent that in recent exams, we did not even have one volunteer for vascular surgery, and likewise, some other specialties remain vacant.”
Fazael ultimately said that if the situation continues in this manner, “we will have to import specialists in these fields in 10 years, and again send patients abroad for specialized surgeries.”
Previously, other officials and figures in the medical community had also warned about the trend of decreasing doctors in the country, including Mohammad Raiszadeh, the head of the Iranian Medical Council, who said, “Some people joke about the medical community, but seriously, the country is becoming empty of doctors.”
Raiszadeh considered one of the main factors in these conditions to be the extensive migration of doctors abroad from Iran and said that the statistics of “professional migration” of doctors are even higher than “migration out of the country.”
Hossein-Ali Shahriari, the head of the Health and Treatment Commission of the regime’s parliament, also announced in late May 2023 the receipt of necessary certificates for work migration by about 10,000 specialists and other Iranian super-specialists over the past two years and said that Arab countries have become the main destination for the migration of Iranian doctors.
On the other hand, very difficult working conditions and low wages have caused significant problems for the medical community, to the extent that many physicians are resorting to suicide.
On May 6, the regime’s Entekhab website wrote about the tragedy of physician suicides: the time gap between these suicides since the beginning of this year (March 21) has reached 10 days (every 10 days a physician commits suicide), and if this trend continues, by the end of the year, a shocking statistic will remain.
The Secretary-General of the Nursing Home also said, “No official statistics are published about physician suicides. This has happened in the past years as well, but now with the help of social media, news spreads very quickly.
