Physicians working with Iranian protesters are warning that hospitals and medical care in Iran may be increasingly used as tools of repression, as doctors are arrested or threatened for treating the wounded and injured demonstrators are denied care.
The effort to compile a database of detained healthcare workers is led by the AIDA Health Alliance (AHA), named after Aida Rostami, a 36-year-old Tehran physician who treated protesters in secret during the 2022 protests, went missing after a hospital shift, and was later found dead bearing signs of torture.
Doctors involved with AHA say they have so far identified at least 40 detained healthcare workers across multiple provinces, including doctors, nurses, medical students, technicians and volunteer first responders. They say the figure is likely incomplete.
“Hospitals are no longer safe places,” said Homa Fathi, one of the doctors involved in documenting the cases. “If a doctor treats a protester, questions security forces or refuses to discharge a patient prematurely, that doctor becomes a target.”
Doctors working on the documentation say the crackdown has pushed medical care underground, forcing physicians to choose between their professional oath and their personal safety.
