The catastrophic situation in the fields of health and healthcare in Iran is rooted in the rule of the Islamic Republic and in social relations that have turned people’s health and medical care into arenas for trade and profiteering. By stripping people of their most basic human rights; by imposing harsh and gruelling working conditions on workers, nurses and other wage earners; by enforcing wages far below the poverty line; by forcing destitution on families and promoting child labour; by expanding poverty and misery; by spreading social calamities such as addiction and prostitution; by destroying the environment; and by refusing to accept any responsibility whatsoever for citizens’ health, the Islamic regime has been the direct cause of the collapse of public health and healthcare to its present disgraceful level.
Premature deaths from preventable diseases, the spread of various illnesses caused by environmental pollution, the selling of body organs in order to survive, premature ageing, and the regressive decline in life expectancy are among the outcomes of this situation. This is while the Islamic rulers themselves receive treatment using the most advanced private medical facilities in Iran and in Europe. Instead of meeting the medical and healthcare needs of the people, the Islamic rulers and the mafia gangs of power have turned the health and healthcare sector into a business for extracting fantastical profits. We remember that during the COVID-19 period, Khamenei himself, at the head of this very regime, by preventing the import of vaccines from the United States, France and Britain and prescribing prayer instead, caused the killing of more than seventy-five thousand people.
Today the country is facing an acute shortage of medical centres, doctors, nurses and specialised healthcare staff, as well as hoarding and scarcity of medicines due to the profit-seeking of the pharmaceutical mafia. The failure to allocate sufficient budgets to ensure adequate staffing, to raise the level of public health, and to treat patients has subjected nurses and other healthcare workers to unbearable working conditions and compulsory overtime. This, alongside tragic incidents such as strokes and suicides, has led to widespread protests by nurses against this situation. On the other hand, the pharmaceutical mafia reaps astronomical profits by selling medicines at exorbitant prices on black markets, while patients lose their lives because they cannot afford visits to doctors and hospitals, cannot obtain medicines, or cannot cover the heavy costs of treatment. With the enormous profits pocketed by the pharmaceutical and health mafias over recent years, and with the funds the regime has spent on repressing the people and on the destructive industry of religion and terrorism, tens of thousands of lives could have been saved and hundreds of medical centres established to protect public health. This is only a glimpse of the miserable conditions of health and healthcare in Iran.
The current chaotic situation must be changed immediately. While the country possesses effective scientific and professional capacities in the field of medicine, the main obstacle preventing citizens from benefiting from appropriate medical and healthcare facilities is a government that places not the slightest value on human life and health. The criminals ruling the country are concerned solely with their profiteering interests and the preservation of their accursed rule. The basis of a principled and humane programme for the provision of public health and healthcare must be the fulfilment of citizens’ needs, not profit-making. Public health and healthcare must be immediately removed from the sphere of commerce and accumulation of profit in order to respond to the urgent needs of citizens. Accordingly, all citizens must have the right to benefit from the facilities of a modern society in order to be protected from harm and disease, and must have access to appropriate medical services. To meet the urgent needs of the people in the fields of treatment and medical care and to secure free healthcare, it is necessary today to place the Islamic Republic under pressure and, in solidarity with the struggles of nurses and other healthcare workers—who face meagre wages and intolerable working conditions—to demand the realisation of their just demands. The demands of the Worker-communist Party in the fields of health, treatment and healthcare are as follows:
-
Appropriate medical care and health services must be free of charge and accessible to all. All citizens, regardless of family income, place of residence, social position and the like, must be able to access suitable medical services according to their needs.
-
Medical facilities and equipment—such as hospitals, clinics, rehabilitation centres and medical schools—as well as healthcare staff including nurses, doctors and specialists, must be expanded in proportion to the population and in line with the latest medical advances. The necessary budget must be allocated, and all of this must serve a system of free healthcare and public health.
-
Improving the quality of medical services is impossible without the immediate improvement of working conditions for healthcare staff. Humane working conditions must be provided for healthcare workers. To this end, working hours must be reduced, wages increased, compulsory overtime abolished, and the right to protest, strike and organise for nurses and all healthcare staff must be recognised.
-
The level of public health and general medical and health knowledge must be seriously improved through the expansion of public education, including sex education in schools.
-
In order to reduce the incidence of disease and injury among citizens, preventive measures such as healthy and high-quality nutrition, adequate housing, safe transport based on environmental standards, as well as reducing the intensity of work and increasing leisure time, must be implemented.
-
In order to confront natural disasters, unforeseen incidents and crisis situations such as war, earthquakes and floods, and to prevent the spread of predictable diseases that endanger public health, the necessary budget must be allocated and the required preparedness created to assist patients and the injured.
-
Epidemic diseases resulting from environmental degradation must be eradicated, and public health must be improved through combating air pollution and environmental contaminants.
-
Occupational safety and health must be ensured using the most advanced equipment and facilities, without any cost-cutting, so that work-related hazards are reduced to the minimum possible level. In the face of occupational hazards and profession-specific diseases, regular supervision and medical examinations must be carried out by medical authorities independent of employers, at the expense of employers and the state.
-
All citizens must undergo regular screening for diseases whose timely diagnosis is vital for treatment or the reduction of complications, such as breast, cervical and prostate cancer, heart disease, and common cancers.
-
Special care and medical counselling must be provided to mothers during pregnancy and after childbirth.
-
Superstitious, religious, patriarchal and backward notions in society—which hinder the development of sexual awareness and specifically obstruct the widespread use by women and young people of contraceptive methods and the protection of sexual health—must be decisively combated.
-
In order to prevent and rapidly detect unwanted pregnancies, pregnancy test kits and contraceptives must be widely and freely available to all, and the public must be educated on how to use them.
-
As long as unsuitable living conditions drive many women towards abortion, even in underground forms, abortion must be legal up to 12 weeks, and after 12 weeks—if there is a risk to the mother’s health—up to the earliest point at which caesarean delivery and the survival of the newborn are medically possible based on the latest medical facilities. Abortion and post-abortion care must be provided free of charge in authorised clinics by specialist doctors and be accessible to all.
-
Children must be fully vaccinated to prevent dangerous and contagious diseases, must undergo regular medical examinations, and must receive free nutrition in schools.
-
In order to improve the physical and mental health of the elderly, their quality of life must be enhanced; they must undergo routine medical monitoring; and home assistance or full care in nursing homes must be provided.
-
In order to ensure the active participation of people with disabilities in all aspects of social life, the necessary facilities must be created, and public spaces, pathways and residential complexes must be equipped with special accessibility provisions. All forms of rehabilitation services and medical care must be made available to people with disabilities, and the cost of technical aids and assistive devices necessary for daily life must be covered by the state.
-
Free and easily accessible services must be provided to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.
-
In order to protect sex workers from diseases and harms associated with this profession, preventive medical services and free treatment facilities must be provided to these citizens. In addition, by securing their livelihoods, conditions must be created to enable their return to a healthy life.
-
If people addicted to drugs declare their readiness to participate in addiction treatment programmes, state clinics must be established to meet their needs.
-
The responsibility for safeguarding the lives of prisoners rests with the state, and they must have access to necessary medical care and appropriate treatment facilities.
So far, parts of these demands have become the subject of struggle by protest movements aimed at bringing about immediate improvements in the appalling state of health and healthcare in favour of citizens. The Worker-communist Party calls on all people to bring their united strength into the arena to realise these demands in full. The determination and united force of the people to achieve these demands are, at the same time, the most important guarantee for turning them into the law of the country after the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.
6 September 2024
AI-assisted translation, from the original Farsi
Be the first to comment