THE failure of the Iranian regime to take effective measures to control the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak led to the country becoming the epicentre of the pandemic in the Middle East.  

The regime’s treatment of its own healthcare professionals is increasingly coming under scrutiny, as the death toll rises and the demand for expert care increases.

However, the regime’s lack of care for its increasingly beleaguered population, suffering from continued sanctions from the United States as well as the government’s corruption and incompetence, is further exposed in its treatment of healthcare staff.

Across the country protests and resentment at government treatment of healthcare staff is beginning to grow, especially as more nurses and health workers lose their lives in the pandemic.  

Measures taken to address shortages are short term and fail to reward health workers for the risks they are taking. 

On Saturday May 9, protests by nurses took place in Gilan province, in the north of Iran.  

The protesting nurses were drawing attention to the high death toll exacted in the course of their work to prevent hundreds of civilians from falling to coronavirus, amid a shambolic response from the governing regime.  

Despite the heroic work of nurses, in an area of Iran particularly badly hit by the outbreak, the health authorities deemed the nurses to be surplus to requirements. 

Agency contracts on which they were engaged, have been ended, leaving them facing unemployment.  

Many nurses had left jobs at privately run clinics and medical centres to relieve the huge pressure on the health service in Gilan province.  

Nurses, stepping in to cover the shortage in the area, expected a move to secure their jobs, giving them a precious degree of stability in their working lives. 

All of this was taking place while the world observed May 12 as International Nurses Day.  

Mohammad Hosseinpour, one of the nurse activists working in Gilan, stated: “Many of the nurses whose death notices were published during the coronavirus outbreak, as well as those currently protesting, had been issued an 89-day temporary contract.  

“Many of them then contracted the virus and transmitted it on to their relatives.  

“They worked on an equal footing with other nurses and took their own lives in their hands, yet they did not stand to gain the slightest benefit.”

Hosseinpour also criticised the official government policy of hiring nurses through HR contractors: “How long must this exploitation of nurses go on for? 

“If the government is to pay nurses, it must do so directly and to the nurse, not the intermediaries [HR pool/sector agencies].  

“How long are the intermediaries between the Gilan University of Medical Sciences and the manpower [nurses] going to be allowed to cause all kinds of problems, such as delays in payment of wages and low incomes?  

“My co-workers have not been paid for exactly 51 days today. We have had a 50 per cent increase in wages for nurses since the beginning of this year, but the nurses engaged from the intermediary company operating have not been entitled to this increase.”

Mohammad Sharifi Moghaddam, head of Nurses’ Home, the official Iranian nurses’ professional trade association, stated: “The 30,000 nurses engaged and deployed by the Ministry of Health are covered by the country’s labour code.  

“The Ministry of Health’s policy over the past seven to eight years has been based on two approaches — one is to increase supply, which is to increase the number of nursing graduates, and the other is to eliminate the job security of nurses, by engaging intermediary HR contractors in hiring nurses.  

“All of this is an effort by the Ministry of Health to make nursing labour cheaper.”

According to reports from the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA), at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis in Iran, the state hospitals overseen by the Ministry of Health were severely affected by the lack of sufficient manpower, so the ministry issued an official call for nurses nationally.  

A large number of nurses were hired in different cities, especially in the “red zone” areas, but under 89-day contracts.  

The Ministry of Health continues to use this arrangement to recruit a large number of personnel needed to combat the coronavirus crisis.  

This form of volume limited-duration work is concluded in line with the provisions of the country’s labour code.  

In practice, though, many of the benefits and entitlements this should bring are not extended to workers engaged under these arrangements.

In spite of the critical situation in Iran, since the second half of April this year, there have also been reports of extensive lay-offs of nurses and staff at the Atieh Private Hospital in Tehran, one of the largest private medical facilities in the Middle East.  

According to reports from inside Iran, half of the 1,200-strong medical staff workforce at Atieh Hospital have been deemed surplus to requirements and sent home.

This mass shedding of the workforce by private hospitals, which are considered to be among the most powerful economic enterprises in the country, is all the more surprising at a time when hospitals throughout Iran are facing unprecedented levels of demand amid the pandemic.  

Nurses and other medical staff are urgently needed, with those already engaged under the most intense pressure.  

The rampant privatisation of healthcare for profit has been overseen in Iran in recent years, especially during the tenure of President Hassan Rouhani’s government. 

This has had major consequences, including corruption, the prioritising of profit over patient care and treatment, a drastic reduction in the number of nurses, and the deprivation of the underprivileged, an increasing number in Iran, from anything remotely resembling adequate healthcare provision.

Meanwhile, reliable reports are emerging of a resurgence in coronavirus infections and deaths following the lifting of the haphazard restrictions belatedly brought in by the regime after Iran became one of the worst-hit countries and the main epicentre of the outbreak in the Middle East.  

According to the regime’s own media reports, the southern province of Khuzestan has been in complete lockdown since Thursday May 7, with nine towns and cities having been designated as virus “red zones.” 

The hospitals in Ahvaz, the provincial capital, reported that they have run out of ICU capacity and are facing a catastrophic situation.

This is compounded by the massive shortage in human and technical resources in the medical sector.   

Once more, there is a belief and expectation that, as was the case in March, medical personnel will be drafted in to come to the rescue.  

In that month alone, more than 100 medical personnel, including doctors, nurses and other health professionals, contracted Covid-19 in the course of their duties and died. 

They showed selfless dedication without raising the issue of their unpaid wages or woefully poor conditions of service.  

The question remains as to how long the Iranian nurses’ sense of duty and professionalism can diffuse their anger and disgust at being continually neglected, taken for granted and treated as a dispensable commodity.  

If Iran is to emerge from this pandemic with anything less than a catastrophic death toll, the regime is going to have to value the healthcare sector.  

That will mean investment in personal protection equipment. It will mean paying nurses and other healthcare professionals the rate for the job. It will mean greater job security for health professionals.

This is not territory in which the current regime has anything like a reliable track record.  

The Iranian people may once again be paying the price for the incompetence of Iran’s pampered elite. 

Jamshid Ahmadi is assistant general secretary of the Committee for the Defence of the Iranian People’s Rights (www.codir.net).