"Tehran Province has the highest burn-related mortality among all provinces in the country" says the officials of the Forensic Medicine Center. It is claimed that Tehran has only one hospital (Shahid Motahhari) that deals with burn cases at sub-specialty level. There are handful of other private hospitals giving care to patients with mild to moderate burns but not to severe cases. The ILNA's journalist reports that 2,690 people with burns die annually [in the country]. However, the number of beds per capita for burn cases has been going down in recent years. The CEO of the Motahhari Inpatient Burn Center (Hospital) says that insurance plans do not cover all costs of patients with significant burns and charities have to be more active to collect money to support these patients. He says that adding one Burn-ICU bed to the hospital costs some 60,000 dollars and the hospital is struggling with economic barriers to expand its facilities to provide adequate care to patients with burn.
My comment: The highest mortality may be due to the fact that cases with severe burn may be constantly referred to hospitals in Tehran.
Reference: Iranian Labor News Agency, online , accessed on August 17, 2011. News Code:202485
Link: http://www.ilna.ir/newsText.aspx?ID=202485
