‘Two million under poverty line’

GVF -- The deputy chairman of Iran’s association of General Practitioners has criticised the low budget dedicated to the health sector for the coming year Iran and said that with the current inflation and the implementation of new subsidy laws, “at least two million Iranians will be under the poverty line with the current health expenses.”

According to the semi-official Mehr news agency, Masoud Moslemi-Fard the state budget for the health sector is not at all in line with the government’s slogans. “Diseases and illnesses cannot be treated with this kind of spending.”

Moslemi-Fard also said that “government officials and decision makers do not take the issue of health seriously.”

Prior to this, MP Ali Akbar Kaidi, had said that the country’s health care system was “disastrous” and said that the current situation was due to the government’s lack of planning. “We will not get anywhere with this way of planning.”

Moslemi-Fard believes that with the new subsidy laws and an increase in people’s expenses, “they will certainly spend less on health care.” He also stated that planned increase in the budget for the coming year was done wrongly.

“The quality of services in the health care centres is low but no one is following up on the issue.”

Many believe that government’s new subsidy plans will have far-reaching consequences amongst the Iranian population, especially among the more vulnerable sectors of society.

Referring to Ahmadinejad’s recent statements regarding Iran’s position in the world as the 17th country, he said, “Mr Ahmadinejad has claimed that we are ranked 17th in the world, but we should ask, what is our position in the health sector.”

“If we are seventeenth in the world, we must be seventeenth in the health sector too, but our rank is now below ninety,” he said.

“Currently sixty percent of health costs are paid by the people’s own pockets. This is against the country’s fourth development plan.”
 
What remains to be seen is how an illegitimate government that rose to power through rigging an election and whose economic worries are rapidly on the rise can continue to function normally in coming year.