Browse the corpus

The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2019 Iran Collaborators1 analyse data from 1990 to 2019. Of particular focus was the effect of sanctions on the health of Iranians through diminished access to quality care. Recommendations described in the report included the necessity for evaluating policies, assessing needs, and setting priorities on the basis of disease burden. However, as the data series ends before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the report does not address the global public health catastrophe that has forced many nations, including Iran, to reassess their preparedness.2 Although the collaborators recommended that the health sector should be prioritised to integrate health-care services primarily to address non-communicable diseases, inadequate responses after the COVID-19 pandemic should also prompt a substantial rethinking of policies to rebuild the health-care system,3 including critical care.4 Severe deficiencies within Iran's critical-care system revealed by the pandemic included little preparedness and an absence of resources necessary to detect, mitigate, and deliver emergency care. As the hardest hit country in the Middle East, the response by Iran's critical-care network was hindered by internal policy failures, by systemic deficiencies, and by external restrictions on humanitarian trade that would have provided the necessary tools to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic more effectively.5