Iran will soon face a severe shortage of pediatric specialists, even in major cities, due to declining interest among general physicians in pursuing pediatric training, the head of Iran’s Medical Council warned on Sunday.
The shortage of pediatricians has reached alarming levels, said Ahmad Reza Rezaeizadeh and questioned why “general practitioners in Iran are not interested in specializing in pediatrics.” Many doctors now turn to the lucrative cosmetic field instead of entering essential specialties such as child medicine, he added.
Iran International reported on October 5 that with the rise of extreme beauty trends on social media, cosmetic surgery clinics across the country have seen a surge in demand.
Health officials have repeatedly sounded the alarm over unfilled positions in key medical disciplines. More than 80 percent of emergency medicine residencies and one-third of anesthesiology positions remain vacant, Ali Jafarian, deputy health minister said recently.
Nearly 29 percent of registered general practitioners in Iran are not practicing medicine, the state-affiliated Nour News website reported in September. Falling interest in six core specialties poses “a structural challenge to Iran’s healthcare system,” said Abbasali Rais Karami, head of Tehran University of Medical Sciences.
Budget crisis and policy failure
The shortage, Rezaeizadeh said, reflects years of policy neglect and underinvestment. “We have patients in various cities but no specialist doctors. In the past four years, the infrastructure for medical education has not been developed. We need 600 trillion rials to expand medical training capacity,” he said.
Policymakers, he warned, remain focused on the number of general physicians rather than ensuring pathways for them to enter specialist programs. “No one is thinking about the prerequisites for admitting general practitioners to specialty training,” he said.
Eghtesad24 reported last year that the lack of pediatricians had already become a major challenge across several provinces, forcing families to travel to Tehran for their children’s medical care.
Pediatric graduates have dropped to less than one percent of total medical specialists since 2017, according to the Research Center of Iran’s parliament. The trend has been worsened by an accelerating wave of emigration among Iranian doctors.
Merit-based policies were vital to retaining talent, said Health Ministry official Shahin Akhondzadeh in September, noting that “most of the top 100 university entrance exam scorers in medical fields emigrate because proper conditions are not provided for them.”
