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Breaking: Iran's Ministry of Health Admits Failure to Contain the Pandemic

November 24, 2020
IranWire
2 min read
The health ministry’s research center spent a considerable amount of time and effort on clinical trials of herbal medicine to treat Covid-19
The health ministry’s research center spent a considerable amount of time and effort on clinical trials of herbal medicine to treat Covid-19

Iran has failed to control the coronavirus pandemic, a new report by the country’s Ministry of Health has revealed.

The ministry’s Research and Technology Department has outlined that during clinical trials for drugs to treat Covid-19, hospitals and research centers also focused on traditional and herbal medicine, a controversial move given that most research worldwide focused on conventional medicine. The research on the prevention and treatment of Covid-19, which IranWire has obtained a copy of, was published on November 10.

In its conclusion, the report lists challenges posed by Covid-19 that cast doubt on the effectiveness of Iran’s health and medical system. The report identifies: a weakness of the health system in identifying infection cases, its failure to anticipate the infiltration of the virus into Iran in a timely manner, failure to control the number of people arriving in Iran from countries with high numbers of infections, failure to communicate to the public adequately and quickly or with clarity and transparency, failure to actively win people’s trust, contradictory statistics about the number of cases and fatalities, and contradictory statements by health officials. This list forms only part of the conclusions — which some people have described as confessions — of the official report, which makes clear the failure of Iran’s Ministry of Health in preventing the spread of coronavirus.

The report reveals that health ministry researchers focused their efforts not only on Remdesivir, Doxycycline, Hydroxychloroquine, Naproxen and Interferon, but also on herbal medicine including licorice, a variety of herbal teas, turmeric extract, damask rose, mint extract, violet, and eucalyptus leaves.

A major part of the research was conducted by the Revolutionary Guards’ Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences. The trials tested on coronavirus patients included “investigation into the effectiveness of hyssop herbal compound in ameliorating Covid-19 symptoms,” “investigation into effects of Imfluna herbal compound in improving the symptoms of Covid-19” and “the effectiveness of treating Covid-19 patients with a compound of licorice, pennyroyal and nettle leaves.”

Other Iranian university research centers and hospitals conducted similar clinical trials. For example, Qom University of Medical Sciences conducted a project called “investigation into the effectiveness of dandelion herbal capsules on coronavirus patients’ symptoms.”

Research conducted by Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences studied the “effectiveness of praying on the level of anxiety, depression and the recovery process of hospitalized coronavirus patients.”

The official report by the Ministry of Health makes no mention of the results of any of its research projects.

 

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