مرکز آموزشی درمانی ولایت

As WEBDA reported, Dr. Seyed Hasan Hashemi, the Minister of Health and Medical Education, declared in the fifth national congress on burn injuires: the nubmer of available beds in burn wards of all hospitals of Iran is considerably lower than acceptable level and must be at least 2-fold.

He mentioned that many available beds are not standard and, at present, approximately 900 beds are available in burn wards throughout the country of which 100 one belong to ICU wards. He stated that beside quantitative insufficiency of beds, more 80% of them are also qualitatively below golbal standard levels.

He hiped universities do more to equipe and operate burn wards and stressed that: nothing significant is performed in the area of burn education and to acquire required staff in this section.

Minister of Health pointed to weaknesses of burn and mental wards in all hospitals and said: “I talked about this issue in all meetings and conferences and im not exaggerating to say that I follow up issues concerning burn on a monthly basis. But, in Iran, decision-makers and authorities make no decisions on problems and disasters unless they experience them”.

He also pointed out insufficient budget allocated to burn wards and mentioned that: the governmetn and the parliament have allocated a budget of 360 billion RLS to support burn patients and this figure dose not suffice. He added: senior managers and university and hospital presidents pay more attention to more profitable wards and it is difficult to change this approach in order to expand burn wards. Of course, by organized tarrifs and with the help of insurance companies, more desired conditions may be achieved using the available knowledge, experience and expertise.

Finally, he pointed to the need to burn prevention in Iran and stated: other countries work more on prevention instead of paying huge costs on treatment. There are also proper regulations on working environments and staff care and we should follow them to be successful.