Physical rehabilitation in Iran after international sanctions: explored findings from a qualitative study
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RESEARCH
Open Access
Physical rehabilitation in Iran after international sanctions: explored findings from a qualitative study Saeed Shahabi1* , Ahmad Ahmadi Teymourlouy2, Hosein Shabaninejad3, Mohammad Kamali4, Kamran Bagheri Lankarani1 and Parviz Mojgani5
Abstract Background: Although the main aims of sanctions are the political and economic pressures on governments, literature has demonstrated the harsh effects of sanctions on the general public, especially on the patients, poor and disabled people. Since the international sanctions regime negatively affected almost all dimensions of Iran’s health sector, this qualitative study was conducted to investigate the situation of the physical rehabilitation sector after these sanctions. Methods: This qualitative study was conducted from January 2019 to June 2019 in Iran using Skype, telephone, and face-to-face in-depth semi-structured interviews. Purposive and snowball sampling approaches were used to identify the participants. Also, framework analysis approach was applied to analyze the collected data. Results: In total, 38 individuals including health policy-maker, faculty member, rehabilitation expert, Physiotherapist, Occupational therapist, and Orthotist/Prosthetist, were involved in the study. Based on our findings, a number of challenges facing the Iranian physical rehabilitation sector during the international sanctions period included: 1) socioeconomic challenges (inadequate funding, rising inflation rate, high unemployment rate, catastrophic expenditures, and inappropriate employment status of practitioners); 2) education challenges (decreased international collaboration and shortage of training devices and materials); 3) international challenges (rising issues in accessing services for patients from neighborhood countries); and 4) service delivery challenges (shortage of raw materials for producing the orthoses and prostheses, hardening of the importing the needed equipment, inappropriate infrastructures, and impossibility to use external assistance). Conclusion: After international sanctions, the Iranian physical rehabilitation sector has faced considerable multifaceted challenges. Therefore, the international community must be aware of the situation and be concerned about the irreparable consequences. Keywords: Sanctions, Embargoes, Physical rehabilitation, Health policy, Qualitative study
* Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Health Policy Research Center, Institute of Health, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in t
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