Iranian Seminary Students Offer Take Care of Western Elderly

A group of students of Iranian seminaries announced their readiness to look after the Western elderly suffering from coronavirus, protesting that the right to live is being denied by the Western capitalists.

News ID: 449801

Date: 29 March 2020 - 09:21

RNA - "This is not a propaganda show-off, but we have learnt from Imam Khomeini to sympathize for others", the group added, noting that what the Western capitalist system is doing is a massacre and an age discrimination to let the 65 or 70 years old people die.

The group made it clear that even if the mechanism for this is not provided, at least this message can be conveyed to the world.

This proposal was announced after a piece of shocking news was released on Tuesday which said that Spanish soldiers helping fight the coronavirus pandemic found elderly patients in retirement homes abandoned and, in some cases, dead in their beds.

Spanish prosecutors said an investigation had been launched.

The military has been brought in to help disinfect care homes in Spain, one of Europe's worst hit countries.

Meanwhile, an ice rink in Madrid is to be used as a temporary mortuary for Covid-19 victims, officials said.

The virus is spreading very fast in Spain - the second worst-hit European country after Italy.

Earlier, a group of young students of Iranian seminaries in a letter to Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif voiced their preparedness to take care of elderly coronavirus patients in the US and Europe who have been abandoned by the medical authorities.

“Given the fact that the old and poor people who are infected with coronavirus in the US and certain European states are not being taken care of properly, the humanitarian responsibility requires us to help these patients and do not spare any efforts to save the lives of the creatures of the kind Creator,” the letter read.

It called on Zarif to pave the ground for sending the volunteer seminaries from Iran to help the elderly patients in the US and Europe or transfer these patients to Iran for treatment.

The coronavirus COVID-19 is affecting over 197 countries and territories around the world. The virus was first reported in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year. It has so far killed more than 27,700 people and infected over 607,000 others globally.

Iran reported on Friday that a total number of 2,378 coronavirus patients have died and 32,332 cases of infection have been identified in the country so far. Meanwhile, 11,133 people have also recovered.

The Iranian foreign ministry declared that despite Washington’s claims of cooperation to transfer drugs to Iran via the new Swiss-launched payment mechanism, the US is troubling the process amid the coronavirus outbreak in the country.

Although US claims that medicines and medical equipment are not under sanctions, they have practically blocked the transfer of Iran’s financial resources in other countries into the Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement (SHTA), Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Abbas Mousavi said.

As the death toll from the virus surges, Iran intensifies its preventive safety measures. Closures of schools and universities have been extended until early April.

The government also imposed travel restrictions, specially on Iran’s north, which is among the red zones. The country has also adopted strict digital health control procedures at airports to spot possible infections.

Health Minister Saeed Namaki announced earlier this month that a new national mobilization plan would be implemented across the country to fight against the coronavirus epidemic and more effectively treat patients.

Namaki said that the plan will include all the 17,000 health centers and the 9,000 medical and clinical centers in all cities, suburban areas and villages.

He added that the plan will include home quarantine, noting that infected people will receive the necessary medicines and advice, but they are asked to stay at home.

Namaki said that people with a more serious condition will stay at the hospitals, adding that the public places will be disinfected, the entries of infected towns and cities will be controlled to diagnose and quarantine the infected cases.

He added that the necessary equipment and facilities have been provided, expressing the hope that the epidemic would be curbed.

According to Fars News Agency, Namaki said that the number of medical laboratories to test coronavirus infection has reached 22, and will increase to 40 soon.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says Iran's response to the virus has so far been up to the mark. Still, it says the US sanctions are a big challenge, and Washington would be complicit in the rising death toll in Iran if it would not remove its sanctions.

The World Health Organization has considered priorities in combating coronavirus and Islamic Republic of Iran obeys and follows up priorities as defined by WHO.

The WHO is dispatching separate delegations to all countries.

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