Posts tagged : "Health"

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iranians, suffering a raging pandemic as their mismanaged and failed state is crushed by US economic sanctions, are taking their own lives in increasing numbers. Even the young are resorting to suicide to avoid the harsh realities of a life of suffering and austerity. Health Ministry data shows suicide attempts rose 23% in the first three months of the Iranian calendar starting March 20, 2020, compared with the same period the year before. Local media, citing sociology researchers, revealed a 60% spike in suicide among Iranians from 2015 to 2019. Hossein Assadbeigi, head of the office of socially vulnerable people at the State Welfare Organization of Iran, said that 5,143 people, including...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: As nations worldwide jockey to secure access to the newly authorized Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19  vaccine, Iranian authorities continue to issue contradictory statements about how and whether inoculations will be made available in the country. Iran, the Middle East’s hardest pandemic-hit country, is by all accounts lagging in the global race to obtain the shots, sparking new criticism of President Hassan Rouhani’s perceived as lacking pandemic response. Iran’s Covid-19 death toll surpassed 53,000 on Thursday. Iran is one of 94 countries that have inked commitment agreements with the COVAX facility co-led by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI);...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Almost five million lives were on the line this week in Iran as the country’s ailing healthcare sector, crippled by US sanctions and troubled by reverse smuggling and price wars, appeared incapable of addressing a critical insulin shortage. “There is no insulin,” reads a viral Persian hashtag seen in tens of thousands of tweets, and which has generated more than half a million impressions on Twitter in the past seven days. With the country also in the grips of a new wave of coronavirus infections, with fatalities rising to levels unseen since the outbreak started in February, Iran’s minister of health has opted for silence in the face of the new crisis. The shortage “is temporary,”...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran’s official coronavirus death toll, which topped 20,000 on Monday, is under domestic scrutiny after a reformist newspaper was shuttered for suggesting the real toll was 20 times higher. On August 10, Iran’s Press Supervisory Board issued an order temporarily revoking the publishing license of the Jahan-e Sanat newspaper, which has been in print since 2004. The reason cited for the decision was an interview run by the paper the previous day titled “No Trust in the Government’s Statistics”, in which an epidemiologist alleged the real coronavirus fatality numbers could be at least 20 times higher than the government’s official tally. The official toll as of Monday was 20,643 deaths...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: The international community is gripped with the fear of an unprecedented health crisis the like of which has not been seen since the Second World War. The novel coronavirus is wrecking lives in some 190 countries and territories and has thus far caused nearly 309,000 deaths. The economic disruption triggered by the pandemic is believed to be the largest global recession since the Great Depression of 1930s. Extensive cancellation or deferral of sporting, cultural, religious and political events; crisis of legitimacy plaguing political establishments across the world; increased vulnerability of natural ecosystems; debilitating stagnation of international tourism industry; widespread closure of schools and...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: As the death toll from the novel coronavirus in Iran approaches 7,000 and cases surge past 100,000, experts are warning that an untimely reopening in progress could precipitate a new wave of infections. “There is no other path ahead of us,” said President Hassan Rouhani, in explaining to the public his decision to ease a weeks-long nationwide lockdown. Iran remains the Middle East’s epicenter of Covid-19, with more than double the number of recorded infections in Saudi Arabia, the region’s second worst-hit country. The Rouhani administration’s appeal to the International Monetary Fund for a US$5 billion emergency loan to fight the public health crisis has not been responded to...

Kourosh Ziabari - International Policy Digest: Media headlines these days are invariably dominated by developments surrounding the global outbreak of COVID-19 that first surfaced in Wuhan, China in December 2019, and was declared a “pandemic” by the World Health Organization on 11 March 2020. The deadly virus, which shares many symptoms with regular influenza, has affected over 2oo countries and territories, claimed nearly 132,000 lives and has triggered unprecedented shutdowns, cancellation of events and gatherings, confined students and clerical workers to homes and prompted many governments to impose national quarantines. SARS-CoV-2 is the name given to the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 is the disease associated with...

Kourosh Ziabari - Responsible Statecraft: Like much of the world, Iran is also engulfed by the deadly outbreak of the novel coronavirus. Thus far, 4,232 people have died and more than 60,000 Iranians have contracted the virus. The country is the epicenter of the disease in the Middle East. Aside from its health impacts, the noxious pandemic has had a clear message for the Iranian leadership: Iran needs viable international partnerships, and to alleviate adversities of this magnitude, it has to disentangle itself from isolation and be part of the international community. Evidently, there are ultra-conservatives and hardliners in Iran, whose vision for the future of Iran is the establishment of an “Islamic North Korea,” bereft...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran, like the rest of the world, has seen the novel coronavirus wreak havoc on public health, the economy, education, and transportation. But in the Islamic republic, the pandemic is also exposing social and religious rifts that have been simmering under the surface for decades, and which come to light at times of crisis. The Iranian authorities on March 16 announced that the shrine of the eighth Shiite Imam Reza in the holy city of Mashhad and the shrine of his sister, the revered Fatimah bint Musa, in the pilgrimage city of Qom, would be closed down to preclude the spread of Covid-19, as both of these sites are used for congregational prayers. Qom was the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in...