Anger and Clamor with a Taste of Health and Treatment

Roya Timourian, an Iranian cinema actress and a close relative of Iranian documentary filmmaker Nima Tabatabai, explained to ISNA the problems that arose in the treatment of this filmmaker's illness for his family. In this interview, she stated: "To prevent any doubts and suspicions, I request the esteemed Minister of Health to meet with me and the prominent figures of Bahman Hospital, along with the documents I have and can present. I hope this face-to-face meeting will be the first step towards peace and friendship." According to Timourian, Nima Tabatabai suffers from a brain tumor, and due to the bleeding from this tumor, he should have been operated on by the surgeons at Bahman Hospital in Tehran, where he had previously been hospitalized. However, according to her, this operation did not take place, and one of the medical team members at this hospital told her that none of the brain surgeons were available: "That night, I had the question: how can all your surgeons have problems at once? We were officially told to take our patient away, and they made excuses that our scanning device was broken. But can a hospital this large and luxurious not have a scanning device?" The iceberg that suddenly surfaced The death of Abbas Kiarostami and the speculations about the cause of his death and the role of medical errors in it served as a wake-up call that suddenly sparked a new wave of criticism against the medical community. On social media, the hashtag 'medical error' was frequently used, and various users shared their experiences regarding this matter. Additionally, Dariush Mehrjui, an old cinema director, sharply criticized the negligence of doctors in Kiarostami's treatment process during one of the memorial ceremonies for him, and some doctors responded to him. Reactions from the medical community, artists, and social media users continued until various news emerged recently that fueled this issue. Manijeh Hekmat, an Iranian cinema director and mother of Pegah Ahangarani, an actress, wrote on her Instagram page that she is preparing for an important heart surgery. The explanations she provided regarding her treatment process since the onset of her illness were interesting: "I also suffered from a wrong medical diagnosis, but in a ridiculous way! I had been coughing a lot since winter, and many doctors after numerous examinations said I had a lung problem and cold, and that I should take injections and eat turnips to get better and avoid walnuts because they are allergenic! Eight months passed, and the cold and lung problem did not resolve until a few weeks ago when I traveled to Germany, and in the first week, my cough worsened, and I was hospitalized in a hospital in Cologne and then in Berlin. The German doctors diagnosed me with acute heart disease! I said my doctors back home said I had a cold and it would get better. In short, the prescription of domestic turnips did not help me and led me into a coma in Germany. The German doctors ordered an open and urgent heart surgery." Hekmat was operated on at her request on Sunday at Pars Hospital in Tehran, and her daughter Pegah Ahangarani expressed her gratitude to her surgeon on her Facebook page, stating that they must wait to see the results of her surgery: "Hekmat has not yet escaped danger, and the anxiety does not leave her companions and friends, but everyone is hopeful and waiting for positive results. When it comes to the hospital and the doctor, regardless of the outcome, it is better to be under the knife of a knowledgeable person than under the feet of the arrogance of the ivory tower dwellers." A painful increasing trend Gholamali Jafari, head of the medical commissions of Tehran province, told the Ana news agency: "Medical errors increase by 5 to 10 percent annually, which has led to an increase in complaints from the public against the medical community, and unfortunately, in about 50 percent of cases, doctors are found guilty and condemned due to negligence, inexperience, incorrect techniques, and lack of sufficient knowledge and science." It seems that attention to these increasing trends in medical errors has prompted the Deputy Minister of Health to adopt new measures. Mohammad Aghajani, at the meeting of the treatment deputies of medical universities across the country, stated: "We have prepared advanced monitoring systems for hospitals in this regard, and the monitoring will be intensified and more systematic. At the same time, we all need to pay attention to reducing medical errors and controlling treatment complications in a timely manner to ensure patient safety through more precise monitoring and new accreditation." Seyyed Hassan Hashemi Ghazizadeh, the Minister of Health, also referred to the atmosphere created against the medical community in the same meeting and said: "In the issue of medical errors, there are two aspects; one aspect is that some make a mountain out of a molehill, and this aspect of medical errors has a political dimension and will exist in the coming months, so do not be upset by this atmosphere." He further asked the medical community to "not pay attention to the irrelevant words of those who make a mountain out of a molehill." According to ISNA, Iraj Harirchi, the spokesman for the Ministry of Health, completely denied the existence of a statement that could add new dimensions to the multiple controversies surrounding the medical community. Some Telegram channels, including the Telegram channel of the Iran newspaper, mentioned a statement in which a group of surgeons announced that they would no longer operate on artists and celebrities. Harirchi told reporters: "We received this news from social media. Some have written that the Minister of Health intervened in this matter, but the reality is that no action has been taken in this regard, and this news and rumors are not true."