Rising Suicide Rate Among Iran’s Young Physicians
An official with the Medical Council of Iran confirmed that 16 cases of suicide have been reported among resident physicians over the past nine months.
An official with the Medical Council of Iran confirmed that 16 cases of suicide have been reported among resident physicians over the past nine months.
Three of the cases happened last week, Babak Shekarchi, Deputy Director of Research and Education in the Medical Council of Iran, told Etemad daily on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Etemad released disturbing information which suggests that the real number of resident physicians committing suicide in Iran could be higher than the number reported.
According to the newspaper, just over the past four months, there have been 14 reports of “early death and suspected suicide” among the young physicians who start their training immediately after graduation.
The Iranian Legal Medicine Organization, which operates as part of the judiciary, refuses to reveal the exact cause of the suspicious deaths of young doctors.
Shekarchi warned that the young trainee doctors who receive low wages are far from financially secure.
In August, Ali Selahshour, representative of the young trainees in Iran’s Medical Council, said those who work in the public health sector receive a monthly payment of at most $280. This can be even less for those who are not married, he added.
As part of the regulations set by Iran’s Ministry of Health, physician residents are also obligated to provide heavy legal collateral.
It is contended that this measure is taken by the ministry in an attempt to prevent young doctors from quitting the residency program and leaving the country for the sake of migration.
Over recent months and following the worsening economic and socio-political conditions in Iran, there have been alarming reports regarding the exodus of healthcare professionals, including doctors.
Back in October, Masoud Pezeshkian, a member of the Iranian parliament, warned of the growing migration of healthcare professionals, adding that this phenomenon could leave the country in a dire shortage.
“Those who have remained are often constrained by low salaries, making it increasingly challenging to maintain their quality of life. With a monthly income equivalent to $200 to $300, many healthcare professionals find it difficult to afford housing and their children's education,” he said.
On December 14, Mohammad Raeeszadeh, the head of Iran’s Medical Council, stressed that healthcare professionals should not “be allowed to leave the country easily.”
“The figures for the immigration of doctors are not publicized because they will be misused. Even the departure of one member of the medical community is a loss for us; because we need their expertise,” he went on to say.
This is while Iran's government severely represses any union protests, including those of medical professionals. Mohammad Sharifi Moghadam, the Secretary-General of the Nursing Association, announced on Thursday that nurses who took part in union protests have received heavy sentences, with some being suspended from their work for as long as six months.
Pakistan claimed the airstrikes were against alleged militant hideouts several kilometers inside Iranian borders at multiple locations in Saravan area which left at least twelve casualties, including several children.
This type of military confrontation between the two countries is unprecedented. Pakistan's airstrike, which occurred a day after the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) similarly targeted what it claimed were hideouts of Sunni militants in Pakistan's Baluchistan with missiles, marks the first attack by a foreign country inside Iranian soil since the end of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988).
“Missiles were fired into the Iranian soil after 35 years. No one can any longer boast of having protected the country from aggression. This is the result of allowing a group that constantly injects radicalism inside and abroad to grow, a self-appointed radical group that has got its hands on money and the media and has infiltrated decision-making structures,” political sociologist and social media researcher Mohammad Rahbari tweeted.
Pakistan’s response Thursday to IRGC’s attack has been very firm, but many believe the Iranian authorities and state media’s reaction has been disproportionately mild and from a position of weakness.
Iranian authorities, including Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi and state media, have largely avoided referring to Pakistan as the perpetrator of the attack. Instead, they are describing the airstrikes as "explosions in a village in the border area."
“Three or four kilometers inside Iranian borders is not different from Tehran or Esfahan. The child that was killed is Iranian. He is a guest in our house even if he is not Iranian by virtue of [identity] documents. Security, in an equal manner, is the right of all residents of Iran,” Mohammad-Reza Javadi-Yeganeh, university professor, tweeted.
Shortly after the attack, Ameneh Sadat Zabihpour, a senior IRIB journalist with very close ties to security and intelligence bodies, implied that Iran and Pakistan had coordinated the attack. Her claim has also angered many.
“And they think national power is not undermined if they tell the media [the attack] ‘had been coordinated’ and they can whitewash everything in this manner,” Rahbari wrote. “After hours I have yet not managed to digest these foul reactions.”
The authorities’ insistence on calling the victims of the attack “foreign nationals”, a term they always use to refer to Afghans in Iran, has also been very conspicuous and angered many. Some local sources claim the victims are among the undocumented Iranians living in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan.
The Shiite clerical regime has refused to issue national identity cards to thousands of Sunni Baluch people over the years, but its television and some loyalists have pretended that the Pakistani attack was not a problem, since those killed were not Iranians. This has prompted the most angry reactions on social media.
“How degenerate must a regime be to call Iran's children non-Iranians. Why? It cannot give a military response to Pakistan; therefore, it tries to gloss over the attack on Iranian soil and the killing of civilians. Pakistan's attack paved the way for other countries [to attack Iran] and showed how weak this regime is,” Youth of Isfahan Neighborhoods, a small dissident group in Esfahan, tweeted.
“To us, being a fellow countryman … is not a worthless piece of paper that you call a birth certificate. To us, those women and children are fellow countrymen even if they were Afghans or Pakistanis, the same way that you are un-Iranian and strangers whether you were born in Najaf [in Iraq as some Iranian politicians are] or in Esfahan,” another tweet with 2K of likes said.