Monthly Report April 2020
Nurses on the frontline vs. rising number of COVID-19 cases, health crisis in prisons, and regime’s inaction
As pointed out by the UN Secretary General and the Executive Director of UN Women in late March, the COVID-19 pandemic “exacerbates gender inequality” and “puts women under considerable stress.”
The UN Women’s Executive Director also pointed out that, “The majority of health workers are women and that puts them at highest risk. Most of them are also parents and care givers to family members. They continue to carry the burden of care, which is already disproportionally high in normal times.”
This is exactly the case with the nurses and other healthcare workers in Iran, the majority of whom are women.
Three months after the outbreak of the coronavirus in Iran, the number of infected cases is still on the rise. The reports obtained by the Iranian Resistance indicate that the number of fatalities due to COVID-19 disease is nearly 40,000 as this monthly is being published.
With the Iranian regime concealing the truth and covering up the scale of infections, healthcare workers and nurses in Iran bear the brunt in coping with the outbreak.
Likewise, in prisons, the regime is taking advantage of the outbreak to further crack down on prisoners, locking them up in extremely unsanitary, overcrowded conditions without providing them protective equipment and minimum hygienic needs.
These are the topics we are going to present in this month’s review of women’s conditions in Iran.
Even before the coronavirus outbreak, Iran stood way below the international standards with a severe shortage of physicians, nurses, and medical staff. Presently, Iranian hospitals are stretched to the limit, and all nurses and physicians are exhausted.
The high number of fatalities and infections among the medical staff, doctors and nurses has brought ever greater pressure on the remaining ones. This is while there are 30,000 unemployed nurses in Iran.
