Health and Hygiene

Iran-HRM – Despite a poor health condition, detained student activist Leila Hosseinzadeh has been held in solitary confinement since she was arrested on December 7, 2021. The prolonged solitary confinement is an inhuman torture commonly used in Iran. After 11 days of being held incommunicado, she called home on December 18, 2021, informing her family that she has been taken …

Al-Monitor – A senior Iranian health official warned that unless measures are tightened it will only be a few weeks before the new coronavirus variant, omicron, dominates the country. Hamid-Reza Jama’ati, who chairs the scientific committee of the National Coronavirus Taskforce, advised the Iranian government to reinstate strict measures for at least four weeks to curb the new variant. Those …

Al-Arabia – Iran has detected its first case of infection by the new omicron variant of the coronavirus, state TV reported Sunday. The announcement comes as the variant spreads around the globe less than a month after scientists alerted the World Health Organization to the concerning-looking version. Read the latest updates in our dedicated coronavirus section. Iran has vaccinated some …

Iranwire – In Iran a project entitled “Smart Covid Management” project is under way, purporting to lay the foundations for a post-pandemic return to normal life. Since February 2020, when the coronavirus outbreak in Iran was confirmed, many such initiatives have been launched in a bid to control the pandemic (quite often prefaced with the word “smart”), including night-time curfews and the …

Iranwire – Fars Heydari, one year and four months old, lived in Goldasht neighborhood of Ahvaz, the capital of Iran’s Khuzestan province. On Friday, December 10, he became the latest victim of the city’s open sewers. That day, he was sitting alongside his parents outside their home. While their attention was diverted, he ran out toward the open sewer and …

Iran-HRM – Qarchak prison officials are preventing political prisoner Zahra Safaei from being sent to hospital to continue treatment for his heart problems. The warden of Qarchak Prison, Soghra Khodadadi, has not allowed Mrs. Safaei to receive medical treatment despite the doctor’s prescription and her family’s repeated inquiries. The political prisoner suffered a heart attack in late August and underwent …

Iran-HRM – A prisoner died on November 30, after being denied adequate medical treatment in a prison in Ilam, western Iran. Ruhollah Maleki, 30, was on the fourth day of his hunger strike that day when he was taken to prison hospital after attempting to commit suicide by taking pills. His physical condition was serious but he was returned to …

Iran-HRM – Despite suffering from a heart condition, political prisoner Mehran Qarebaghi is deprived of urgently needed medical care. Reliable sources in the Prison of Behbahan, in the southwestern Khuzestan Province, reported that Mehran Qarebaghi, 29, is in tremendous pain because of a heart condition he has suffered due to stress and massive pressure under interrogation and during detention. Nevertheless, he …

Iranwire – PEN America has called for the immediate release of jailed writer Baktash Abtin after it emerged he had contracted severe Covid-19 in prison. Abtin was summoned to Evin Prison last September to begin his sentence alongside two other senior members of the Iranian Writers Association, Keyvan Bajan and Reza Khandan Mahabadi. He has had Covid-like symptoms twice and this time …

Iranwire – Coronavirus is yet again tearing through Evin Prison and two members of the Iranian Writers’ Association have come down with Covid-19, a political prisoner told IranWire in a phone call. Baktash Abtin and Keyvan Bajan were both summoned to begin their six- and three-and-a-half-year sentences in September 2020, while the pandemic was still raging. Abtin was transferred to Tehran’s Taleghani …