WHO Donates Medical Supplies to Iran

EghtesadOnline: Using funds raised by Kuwait and Japan, the World Health Organization donated $4 million worth of CT scanners to help Iran quell the coronavirus pandemic.

News ID: ۷۵۰۵۱۰

23 July 2020

WHO donated 16 CT scanners to Iran’s Health Ministry to support containment efforts amid a second wave of infections, IRNA reported on Wednesday.

CT Scans are pivotal to detecting the deadly virus in suspected patients.

Dr. Christoph Hamelmann, WHO’s representative in Iran, said WHO supports Iran’s efforts to halt the surging number of Covid-19 cases.

“The international organization will continue to assist Iran by supplying medical equipment, training healthcare practitioners and raising public awareness,” he said.

The donation was secured by humanitarian aid from Kuwait and Japan.

Since the outbreak began in Iran in late February, WHO has dispatched a team of experts and delivered testing kits as well as personal protective equipment for healthcare personnel.

The organization in charge of coordinating the global fight against the pandemic has also supplied Iranian hospitals with a total of 75 arterial-blood gas analysis devices, which were funded by the Japanese government. The equipment are used to monitor severely-ill coronavirus patients.

Iran added 2,586 new confirmed cases to its Covid-19 tally on Wednesday, taking the national total to over 281,000, Health Ministry Spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said.

Overnight deaths witnessed a slight decrease compared to a day earlier, reaching 219, which brought the death toll to 14,853, the spokeswoman said.

She said, “So far, 244,840 have recovered or been discharged from hospitals and 3,609 are in critical condition.”

Iran has carried out 2.22 million PCR tests to identify infected individuals.

The health official pointed out that there was an 8% drop in counties in a state of emergency but a 40% rise in alarming counties

Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani-Fazli said Iran will not change the date of its national university exam, noting that they have added 50 centers and increased testing days from two to four to hold the key exam as safely as possible.

Global infections rose past 15.1 million on Wednesday and deaths reached 620,000.