Ali Ibn Abitaleb village in near Mirjaveh County in Sistan-Baluchestan Province, bordering Pakistan, is one of the hundreds of deprived border villages that now benefits from quality basic health services, under the Health Reform Plan.
Iran’s primary healthcare services are normally provided by health houses in rural areas and include vaccination of infants, midwifery services, and screening for visual, hearing and skeletal disorders in children as well as malaria, leprosy, breast cancer, and mental illnesses in adults.
Preventive care is a priority and special attention is paid to higher-risk groups such as mothers and children. Healthcare workers are chosen and trained within each community. Preventive and curative programs are integrated.
A report published by the Persian-language newspaper ‘Iran’, says that besides the provision of basic health services, physicians working in Mirjaveh’s health house are also responsible for protecting the country against the threat of infectious diseases from across the borders.
All foreign nationals who enter the region must be quarantined for an hour to be screened for malaria and tuberculosis (TB) and ensure that oral polio vaccine has been administered to children.
According to the paper, 10,500 Pakistani nationals live in the area.
In response to a query on what the main health complaints are, Bentolhoda Safdari, a lady physician at the health center said, “The average number of visits to the center is 100 to 120 per day. About 60% are women, 30% children, and 10% men. Respiratory and parasitic diseases and diarrhea and vomiting are among the health problems mostly prevalent in the area.”
In the second half of the previous year that ended in March, about 630 women gave birth at the center (3-4 deliveries per day). “Unlike other provinces in the country, the fertility rate is high in Sistan-Baluchestan, in particular in Mirjaveh County,” she added.
Ambulances Needed
The nearest city is 200 km from the village. “One more ambulance, apart from the existing two, is required, as sometimes patients with emergency health complications like stroke, difficult pregnancies, etc need to be transferred to city hospitals.”
According to Safdari, a small 32-bed hospital is under construction in the area and will open by the end of the Iranian year in March 2017. The hospital will be equipped with two simple operating rooms.
Promoting Health Houses
One of the programs implemented under the Health Reform Plan launched in May 2014, was the expansion of health houses. Last year, 1,000 were established across the country.
Each health house is also responsible for compiling critical data. This includes: registering the number of residential units in the area; the number of people per household, their age, gender, and relation with head of the household, occupation and level of education; chronic illnesses or disabilities and households’ demographic changes (marriage, death, migration).
Provision of training in self-care to rural people is among the other responsibilities of health houses which have a significant role in preventing infectious and non-communicable diseases among rural people.
Introduced in Iran in 1980, health houses are the basic unit of the rural health care structure, with responsibility for family health and wellness, census taking, public education, disease monitoring and control, environmental health, and the collection and reporting of health data. The health house staff - usually local residents who’ve been specially trained - refer patients to the area’s health center or district hospital if they need more sophisticated services.
