TEHRAN – A team of experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) Headquarters, as well as the Regional Office for Eastern Mediterranean, visited Tehran on December 11, to support Iran’s Ministry of Health in enhancing health care provision.

The 3-day visit aimed to provide a platform for consultations and discussions on the proposed strategy by local authorities to scale up national capacity in health workforce education by enrolling additional medical students in universities of medical sciences.

The proposal has been triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic that has weakened health systems worldwide, including in the Islamic Republic of Iran, and caused an immense burden on health systems and the workforce.

During the visit, a number of meetings were held with Health Minister Bahram Eynollahi, and a number of relevant high-ranking officials representing different stakeholders, where the issue of health workforce retention was highlighted as a major challenge.

Iran has an extensive primary health care network that calls for any health-related policy and decision-making to factor in the availability of diverse skillsets in the overall health care network. That highlights the need to review and enhance the diversity of health care personnel to optimize the available workforce, particularly the currently outnumbered nursing professionals. Within that context, different WHO strategies, guidelines, and tools to guide the process were presented.

The discussions concluded by underpinning the need and importance of undertaking a more in-depth study over the next 6 months to gain a better understanding of the situation, as well as exploring options to retain health workforce in a myriad of specialties, and reviewing scenarios aimed at strengthening the health workforce to advance universal health coverage across the country.

FB/MG