Two hospitals in Zehak and Hirmand counties with 82 and 32 beds respectively, in Sistan-Baluchestan Province, were inaugurated by Health Minister Seyed Hassan Ghazizadeh Hashemi, during his visit to the province earlier this month.
The well-equipped hospitals have different wards including urology, surgery, children and women as well as the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and intensive care unit (ICU), the Persian-language newspaper ‘Iran’ reported.
“The people here will no longer have to travel long distances for healthcare services,” Hashemi said.
The Health Reform Plan launched in May 2014 is directed towards deprived areas. In the next two or three months more physicians will be sent to the province, he added.
Sistan-Baluchestan in the southeast of the country borders Pakistan and Afghanistan, with a population of 2.5 million and Zahedan as its capital. It’s the largest province among the 31 provinces in the country with an area of 181,785 sq km.
Capacity Expansion
At least 50 hospital projects will be completed by the end of the incumbent government’s tenure, said Deputy Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mohammad Jafar Alizadeh.
With the completion of the projects, 80,000 beds will be added to the total hospital bed-strength that currently stands at 130,000 or 1.7 per 1000 people, and will increase it to 2.7 per 1000.
Hospital beds (per 1,000 people) are 0.5, 0.6, 1.3, 2.5, 2.7, 3, 3.8 and 8.3 in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Turkey, Canada, UK, China and Germany, respectively.
This year (started March 21) construction of 32 new hospitals is on the agenda of both the health and roads and urban development ministries.
Alizadeh said in the past year, 14 new hospitals with 1,318 were constructed and handed over to the Health Ministry.
While the term “hospital bed” refers to the actual bed, it is also used to describe the space in a health care facility as the capacity for the number of patients at a facility is measured in the number of “available beds.”
