Almost 29 percent of registered general practitioners in Iran are not practicing medicine, according to figures cited by local media, which said the trend highlights waste in training costs and ongoing shortages of medical specialists.
More than 104,000 general practitioners are officially registered, but at least 30,000 are not active in the field, Nour News, an Iranian outlet affiliated with Supreme National Security Council, reported Thursday.
“The number alone demonstrates the loss of educational, financial and human capacity in a country that constantly faces shortages of specialists and unequal access to health services,” the outlet wrote.
It criticized authorities for repeatedly expanding medical school admissions as a response to shortages, arguing this has produced “a surplus of manpower without efficiency.”
Concerns about the lack of specialists have grown in recent years.
Interest in six key specialty fields has declined to the point that “the absence of applicants in these core disciplines will confront Iran’s healthcare system with serious challenges,” Abbasali Reis-Karami, head of Tehran University of Medical Sciences warned in July.
Training each general practitioner, according to Nour News, costs the government “tens of thousands of dollars,” yet many leave medicine altogether or turn to unrelated jobs.
No effective strategy has addressed the shortage of specialists, the outlet added, citing the most recent residency exam where only 10 percent of emergency medicine slots were filled, alongside 32 percent in anesthesiology, 22 percent in pediatrics, and 15 percent in infectious diseases.
An increasing number of Iranian doctors and nurses are leaving the profession or emigrating, mainly due to very low wages, raising concerns about a serious shortage of healthcare workers.
Iranian medical and government officials have repeatedly warned in the past few years about the inevitable deterioration of the healthcare system and its possible collapse if the same trends continue.
