More specialists migrating from Iran than GPs: Daily

The report, by Iranian daily Donyay-e Eqtesad, said specialists were leaving Iran in pursuit of better opportunities in larger numbers than GPs, whose annual emigration rate after the height of the Coronavirus pandemic had already increased two-fold.

It said between 6,000 to 10,000 specialists were leaving the country every year.

The figures could not be independently verified.

Donyay-e Eqtesad said the variation was due to the fact that authorities were refraining from publishing official records.

It anonymously quoted a specialist as saying that in the Iranian calendar year of 1398, at the end of which the pandemic started, some 3,000 specialists had left the country; in 1400, i.e. two years later, that figure had risen to 5,000.

An Iranian health official said last week that over 800 Iranian midwives had emigrated last year.

The COVID-19 pandemic strained the medical community in all countries. But reports say large numbers of Iranian doctors and nurses decided to emigrate to other countries in the wake of the contagion.