Jennat Heidarpoor, MD
Doctors, psychotherapists, dentists, and pharmacists in Germany all originally from Iran came together in 2022 to form ParsiMed eV, a German medical association created by 30 Iranian exiles. The group was founded during the wave of anti-government protests in Iran that year. It aims to help people in Iran affected by repression by the country’s clerical regime.
One of its members is Jennat Heidarpoor, a general practitioner in Hamburg, Germany. In this interview with Medscape’s German edition, she spoke about how ParsiMed provides remote care to people wounded in violent crackdowns, what medical access looks like inside Iran, and how the situation has changed since the start of the war.
How do you exchange information with your colleagues, and how do you stay in contact with people in Iran?
We ourselves communicate via Zoom when we hold our regular meetings. We also use WhatsApp to be able to get in touch quickly and easily and to discuss the situation in Iran. We also have a presence on Instagram. People in Iran like using Instagram a lot. Accordingly, we often receive requests through Instagram and also via Telegram.
How does ParsiMed handle requests?
We receive very many requests. First, we must verify and check whether these are genuine cases. Because there are also people who want to profit and contact us to get money. We usually make contact via WhatsApp. We write that we would like a phone number we can call, and in that call, we ask a little more precisely what it is about and what we can do.
We look at injured patients, if possible, via video call. The physician team at ParsiMed gives patients concrete tips on what to do. Other callers seek connections; many injured people need money for further treatment. Many are simply emotionally exhausted and need psychological support. Often it is relatives of patients who contact us. Some patients have relatives here in Germany who get in touch with us from here. We see how we can help concretely.
The Iranian government imposed a near-complete internet shutdown in January. How do people reach out now?
They have access to social media via apps when the internet is working — or rather, when it has not been shut down. But in general, our patients and colleagues in Iran contact us through social media. However, this is heavily filtered by the government, so people need apps that can bypass those restrictions, which is not easy. There are sporadic problems, but at the moment the authorities have largely left those channels alone, so we can maintain contact fairly well.
A Tehran physician told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), a German daily, about arrests in his clinic. What is the situation for your colleagues?
A friend of mine, also a doctor, who happened to be in Iran at the time and was in contact with other doctors there, confirmed to us what this doctor from Tehran reported in the FAZ. Soldiers loyal to the regime came to hospitals and took away people who were being treated or had just undergone surgery.
Injured demonstrators who had sought medical treatment were taken directly from the hospital. Their families were later notified that their bodies could be collected in exchange for a ransom. The soldiers shot the injured people in the head, leaving no survivors. Those who were taken from the hospitals were all executed with shots to the head.
How dangerous is it for Iranian clinicians to treat injured demonstrators?
In the first few days after the soldiers abducted and murdered the wounded from the hospitals, hospital staff refused to treat injured people at all, fearing that they themselves would be abducted and murdered. This fear was not limited to the doctors; it also affected the patients, who had witnessed the abduction and killing of the wounded from the hospitals.
We ourselves have plenty of photographic evidence showing bodies that had just received medical treatment, for example, with a catheter inserted or a bandage. These people were in the middle of treatment when they were abducted and shot.
Providing medical care to injured demonstrators is dangerous for doctors for another reason as well. Bandages and dressings, for example, are readily available. But if a doctor buys too much, or an unusually large amount, they will be approached and asked, “Why did you buy so much?” And then they will say, “You’re probably helping the injured.” This puts the doctor in danger.
What options do injured demonstrators have for medical help? Can they get care through ParsiMed?
If they know about us, yes. We work with anonymous physician teams inside Iran. Many wounded people have stayed home, self-treating and taking antibiotics to prevent infection. These patients are also in contact with us and are asking for support or assistance.
Others pay local doctors large sums to take the risk of treating them, sometimes thousands of euros. For example, treating a child with facial injuries might cost about €6000 (roughly $6500); an amputation could cost about €7000 (roughly $7600).
We can’t raise those amounts, but we try to mediate. A few volunteer doctors provide nearly free care; we refer patients to them, when possible, although coordinating that is arduous.
What has the situation been like there since the start of the war? And do you still have contact with Iran?
The situation in Iran is currently very unclear, making it impossible to provide precise, verified information. Reliable information about the war is generally not available from Iranian media.
To give one example: At the start of the 1979 revolution, the future founders of the regime set fire to a cinema in southern Iran, killing more than 300 people, in order to blame the crime on the country’s then-ruler, the Shah. They later confirmed this themselves. Such tactics are a well-known and documented method of the Islamic rulers.
This rocket strike on the girls’ school happened immediately after the attack by the Israeli and US armies, in the very first hours, although they say they were not responsible for the shelling. According to civilians, the rockets and bombs are being aimed very precisely at military targets. Now that many military and police facilities have been largely destroyed, thousands of soldiers and police officers have occupied schools, hospitals, sports halls, and other civilian facilities across the country.
Internet access is infrequent, brief, and sporadic. Even so, we receive occasional photos, videos, and short reports. We maintain regular, though brief, telephone contact with our loved ones in Iran. They are not allowed to share much information with us beyond letting us know they are safe.
The soldiers’ activities are limited to the intensive repression of the civilian population: Every car is stopped and searched, and people are forbidden from filming. We do not know how many civilians have already died. Contact among Iranians inside Iran is very limited.
What are your future plans for ParsiMed?
Right now, no visas are being issued, so we cannot bring injured people to Germany. International humanitarian groups such as Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) and the German Red Cross face restrictions in Iran, limiting in-country aid. We are dependent on people fleeing the country for access to outside care.
We are exploring establishing medical facilities in neighboring regions, for example, in parts of Iraqi Kurdistan, Turkey or Iraq, where we could treat injured patients. We would deploy medical teams there, but we cannot do it alone. We are seeking public and political support, contacting humanitarian organizations and writing to governments and institutions to raise awareness about the current state of medical care in Iran.
This article was translated from Medscape’s German edition.