October 14, 2022
A doctor in Lorestan province says his clinic has been shuttered and his medical license revoked because he treats poor patients for free.
IranWire reported Dr. Yaser Rahmanirad also offered pregnant women referrals for prenatal screening from his clinic in Khorramabad. The Iranian government has recently moved to restrict patients’ checking for fetal abnormalities, as part of a drive to increase the birth rate.
In early August, IranWire’s Persian team reported that Dr. Rahmanirad was being threatened with suspension by the Social Security Organization for offering poor patients free admission. Lorestan is a comparatively deprived province and a higher-than-average number of households is either on the lowest grade of health insurance, or uninsured.
In turn, the clinician had taken to Instagram to denounce the threats, telling would-be patients in the area: “We are actually living in an era where the Islamic government feels its alleged authority is in jeopardy if you visit the sick for free, and tell others to pay just as much as they can.
“They’ve told me I’ll have to close my office next month. I said make whatever mistake you want; I’ll pitch a tent on the edge of the city and go and visit the poor. I’m not paying attention to their threat to revoke my license, because it isn’t within their remit.”
Not two weeks after this exchange, Rahmanirad posted again to say a group of security agents, who did not identify themselves, had come and sealed the clinic until further notice on the orders from “judicial authorities.”
Speaking to IranWire, the doctor said: “My feeling is that the pressure on me came because of my posts on Instagram, encouraging screening and offering free admission. The insurance division had no right to close the premises, so two soldiers came and did it instead.”
He added that he was worried about punitive legal action for other decisions he made as a doctor: “I prescribed methadone to an addict who later died. The Lorestan forensic specialist has written that I am ‘five per cent guilty.’ I assume they put pressure on the medical examiner to blame me.”
IranWire said it was told Rahmanirad’s license was revoked at the initiative of the Pasdaran.
Rahmanirad trained at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences in the early 2000s.