A new report has shed light on a growing crisis within Iran’s healthcare system: despite a surplus of general practitioners on paper, the country continues to face a severe shortage of specialist doctors and an unequal distribution of healthcare services.
Citing data from the Medical System Organization, the state-affiliated Nournews reported on September 18 that nearly 29 percent of registered general practitioners in Iran are not practicing medicine. Of the more than 104,000 registered general practitioners, at least 30,000 have left the medical field altogether.
“This number alone indicates the waste of educational, financial, and human capacities in a country that is continuously facing a crisis of shortage of specialist doctors and unfair distribution of health services,” Nournews wrote.
The report criticized the authorities’ continued emphasis on expanding the number of general practitioners as a solution to the doctor shortage. According to the outlet, the regime’s policy of boosting admissions for general medical studies has produced nothing more than an “inefficient human resource inflation,” while failing to address the real need: the training and retention of specialists.
The cost of training a single general practitioner is estimated at tens of thousands of dollars. Yet many graduates have either shifted to other professions for financial survival, taken non-medical jobs, or abandoned medicine entirely.
