House welcome to the street tell us he. I love from tehran my name is abbas us. Senior Research Fellow at the center for a minute is the study studies i mean the capital city to iran. Good to have you welcome to the stream how lonely guy welcome back to the street thanks for having me im negara marc has the an iranian american journalist based in washington. Hello vera welcome to the straight. Hello from office right im really are im really im a doctoral student and currently at Oxford University i focus on Public Health in iran so i spend half of my time into her own and half of my time in oxford its. Good to have you guess lets start the conversation with dr neal brahimi she told the stream a little bit earlier how difficult it was for medical staff initially when they were trying to handle the coa finest outbreak in in iran and she explains how difficult stop was at the beginning to situation wasnt good at all because all of a sudden the hospital turned into the center of an Infectious Disease and the heart to heart means the are assisting our men you know readers who grew to the immune compromised patients. Also the number of patients was overwhelming we didnt have enough beds for some our colleagues got infected and on fortunately the wires to go and they some of them from eyes. Now businesses which are beginning to open people are still dying so from a Public Health perspective what does that actually mean what east of risk iranians are taking. So of course if you want to answer the question from an absolute person Public Health perspective it would be better to have lockdowns and not have anyone leave their houses but of course when were thinking about deaths caused by coronavirus its also important to think about deaths caused by malnutrition hunger and poverty and so you ron as opposed to many other nations that are facing Coronavirus Crisis is economically pressured under u. S. Sanctions and so the reason for opening up is primarily to make sure that people in the disadvantaged classes are not going to struggle more severely so the issue is not what you see in many western countries where their concern is about Economic Growth its more about actual deaths that would be caused by this crisis and from an epidemiological prospect right now iran has had lowered death rates and the recovery deaths are higher so its in a similar position as you can say to germany so even though its risky its also possible to open up about if you look at what me around your neighborhood in toronto what i actually see people be dealing out and about. Some reeks of. The. Virus and the crunchy were seeing that the country is reopening gradually from social distancing the governments that they are shifting towards smart social science that means you will be able to go out they have try to live their limitations but to be intercity on. Our entire province transportation but yet we have some distance from that normal condition and the markets are on this tracey can see that some shots. But you cannot see those many customers that their president president in those shops some time ago im before the call that 19 and you know the difficult situation in the country was difficult initially because. You know there are there have been 2 targets on the one side the government wants to avoid more death tolls on the other side they want also to save the economy runs the economy was not in Good Condition theyve been before it covered 19 so we have 2 targets one side is so avoid more infections and thaws on the one side but on the other side is to avoid bad economic condition and these 2 targets interestingly they contradict each other and this has somehow being come hounded by the sanctions by the United States because in order to come back the virus you need medical resources as well as Financial Resources so now that iran has to try to use those medical resources it also needs Financial Resources the reading these sanctions time i think it has been a bit difficult that we have been seeing that iran comparing to other countries somehow have been reopening gradually sooner and then the other countries maybe and if it wasnt due to the sanctions being my had a bit more time to reopen gradually about i want to bring in a personal story and thanking the golfer tweeting this out u. V. Tweet a story about an iranian bullet hes gone by and cry out and he recorded a video for the president he says i dont have food to feed my family after 20 years of working im not a straight he an american spy a spy gets a resolution and the iranian d something for us and he puts. Hands around and you can see just these empty shelves i dont know son every one she saying but i can hear the bike. Well as its been said its the story many different demographics and thereon the economic crisis this is a very serious problem right now on its. Face with this outbreak its not only the problem in iran you see its basically a universal problem right now but there are different challenges this. Economic resource the. Unique challenges that iran is dealing with theres a 50 percent budget deficit within their id and government this year one of the highest if not the highest in its history as experts are saying and to feel that. There crippling sanctions from the u. S. Government of facing a serious challenge like saying how the Public Health perspective they have to continue to lock down even officials in that House Ministry are basically recommending that the social distancing on lockdown continue but from an Economic Perspective you need to keep the population while you tell them to not work when you tell them to stay home and it just seems like the government doesnt have enough resources thats why they even asked for an emergency loan from the International Monetary our a u. N. Financial body for the 1st time since the 1960. 55000000000. 00. Of the lack of resources that the government is dealing with. So i guess this is a room. In the economy one second im just going to go to you. With peoples lives so that haitis will says he. Thank you so much being part of the show the public will the public still take precautions if the economy opens thats a very practical question. If you want. I can add on that because as i have been researching for my article to write about this and ive been in touch almost constantly with everyone in iran the thing that has shocked me most is that the precautions that are taken by the iranian public are much more strict and serious than what i see in the u. K. And what i hear from my friends from around the world really. And that has been quite surprising to me and its something that i think it has definitely contributed to the lower and slot her curves that we see in iran despite the fact that there werent any sort of forced military lockdowns in iran but because you see right now on the streets of iran 80 percent of people are Wearing Masks and many people are wearing gloves many people try to disinfect things whereas in the u. K. In where there. Is much steeper and we are at the peak right now if you go onto the streets right now maybe one out of every 100 people is wearing a mask and no one is wearing gloves so in that sense i think that even though from a global Health Perspective we oftentimes have this perspective that countries in the global south dont have better hygiene practices but what were really seeing is that in the developing world in many countries people are actually taking very serious Public Health precautions. I want to push us on to talk about the Health Care Professionals who are working in iran marjan yazdi is a documentary photographer and shes been taking pictures from one particular hospital that hes dealing with because theyve 19 patients you can see nurses in some of her pictures dealing with patients they have some form of the equipment on but shes been following this to see what is going on i have been documenting the. Bias in one of the hospitals and yes there has been problems no shortage of. Recruitments in the hospitals which is mainly due to the u. S. Sanctions but at the same time there has been enormous amount of peoples and Business Owners dimensions to the hospitals which has been agreed to the has to care professionals. And so much it is saying that the lack of protective equipment for the doctors isnt because they havent been ready they havent been prepared to deal with sanctions at the last you want to pick up on that because its not quite so simple as many cool humanitarian aid can get through to iran it hasnt been why. Well on the other side we have been saying that american officials there have been talking about sending some aid to the ron in order to help the country to combat their virus but on the other side you have been saying that the American Government in action stopping them blocking those h 2 b. To iran that have been some pressure groups in the United States intimidating some countries and companies in order not to work with iran and recently ran on Health Officials said that the United States treasury a lot. Why you re. On the. Virus testing by south korea to sell to iran and you wont want to pay for that it was not just a this is something in practice this is happening to those personal protective equipment. But initially this was somehow problematic in the country in terms of finding some or. In this in fact things or some other things people it was something visible in the country but these days. A couple of days ago i saw it when a supermarket because find some of this impact then sandy was available and the prices are better and logic this time but on the other hand those lets say sanctions they have been them. On 2 aspects that is as you said on the p. P. Protecting him on his. Yes and other side it has been the related to those that say the Economic Resources the country it is to fight against the virus because iran has demanded for a loan from International Monetary fund now dont you make a little of that you mentioned that a little bit earlier let me just go back to when and if this one guy. Says what kind of american sting to hold the government to account and try to end sanctions just sitting there in washington d. C. Right now what can american stay. Well just to add to what i have a saying in and in a way answering the question u. S. Officials continuously claim that we and medicine are not ancient and thats true thats true that medicine is exempt from you i think but there is no medicine corner wise we have to remember whats lacking is medical devices medical equipment most of the which are not exempt from high tech for example oxygen mask we contacted nation. Specifics to it as youre talking about protective personal protective equipment ive been in touch with multiple international n. G. O. S who are basically trying to build the. Equipment that dont get into iran and theres been a lot and thats because from a talent of the Health Workers of the nurses that youre talking about it i did some research on that as well as phil iran as. Has been actually impressive a pretty Good Health System compared to most of its neighbors and countries with the same sort of condition but at the same time this problem has been beyond the capacity of the house system and listening to learn just making it worse still what i see i know here in washington. What u. S. Officials here in washington are saying is a little bit misleading to their own public claiming bad medicine is not sane shows but then also not addressing medical devices and equipment and of course a Bigger Picture you can make a problem that iran is facing thats a direct. So you saying that are you saying to me just question you cant do anything is what you say as an amount well thank you you will if you can to democracy here and they can hold their official they could be 3 members of congress or they department what im trying to address the problem messaging is that u. S. Officials from the state of prime and from the white house are misleading the public and this is an important piece of information to have that its the medical devices and equipment that theyre dealing with and also the economic problem however the way the citizens are n. G. O. S working on this their advocacy groups their activists here on the ground in washington across the u. S. Who are calling on the u. S. Government the trumpet ministration to east sanctions on iraq and. So i would say because i have also lived in the u. S. And im quite familiar. The u. S. System and general american attitude and i think that its important to really not try to show iran as this failing states because. Iran was one of the 1st countries that experienced the outbreak of koran a virus and the reason why its initially got out of control was because of u. S. Sanctions because we didnt initially manage to get testing kits and personal protective equipment into the country but then it quickly ramped up production and Civil Society mobilization occurred sort of the whole society and the strong institutions of the country came together and they really controlled the pandemic in a way that i wouldnt say it has been outside of the capacity of the Health System so its really important to acknowledge that for example when joe biden has recently said that im not quite aware whether we need to remove sanctions or not because it seems like this is a scam and iran doesnt need help its important to say that we dont have to picture and portray a dysfunctional iran we dont have to neglect the accomplishments of the Health System we can acknowledge that but also acknowledge that this is happening under extreme. Sanction conditions and the fact that the sanctions have an Economic Impact and Economic Impacts would lead to malnutrition which went which then would later cause more coronavirus deaths so i think i have to say. And you and i have i have to just push you just a little bit because youve written about this and im just looking at the tweet with you actually saying this is what ive written about sanctions and sickness about this nuance idea of what iran is able to do in terms of health care and also deceiving the fly of iran for the way it is company what im not hearing and the guy i know you did some work on this is about irans nurses them artists. Maximum pressure i am hearing nothing from you about the nurses a fact that they are now being labelled as modest tell us about this story youve been sharing with a rare a very heartbreaking sort of blow to the Iranian Health care what we call them. But like the group that Health Care Providers basically that we initially especially until the peak of the epidemic we lost about 43. 00 and estimate a 43. 00 Health Care Workers many of them in the northern parts but its important to consider that then again its not that my article is acting this its actually really going to the heart of it because they didnt happen in the beginning when we didnt have their 1st and i was actually the only nigga and the guy was going to tell us some stories about the nasties but i understand where youre going from let me just push on just a little bit as were talking about nurses allie is a nurse he is in toronto he was very uncomfortable about actually speaking to us on camera so he recorded its own video and audio so we just have his voice but what hes concern was was that the official figure is not accurate and a number of the medical professionals in iran were not being allowed to speak about this and be able to explain this fortunately most of the hospitals are packed nurses are booking long long and sometimes over. Sanctions directly affected them Health Care System i mean them to not having enough equipment so im up to date facilities the numbers of this are absolutely full from reality and from last week again percentages of visits or going to court orders sometimes and because of that increased pretty good thing to be facing the sit down. Doctors and nurses have. To talk to the media about the facts so its hard problem or other Health Issues to. Who died because up the corner by lose their certificate of the label thats caused problem or other holds issues maybe thats why the numbers of the not numbers of that that up the corner why it was in iran is far from reality people are extremely angry because of opening to stores and shops but they have no options dezi or support from government and they must feed to family. So i pass what i want to pick up on things is that you have been a diligent me reporting the secrets to how think us from the Health Ministry and just scrolling through down to day after day youre given the rundown of the think as the cases the cases have recovered the people who have died how confident are you that speakers that you are sharing accurate figures i know its been difficult around the world to get these accurate figures but he confident that this is the full story. Well i think you know it would be very difficult to lets say exact numbers that many people in a country have been infected and thats not an intentional covering but thats because you dont know how many an event those people have been in fact that they themselves even though and they did not know that they carried the virus because they might not have those symptoms that are there so thats why you can you can thats a relatively roughly talking about those figures but i think there is no reason for you ron to hide those numbers if you hide their numbers and you know lets say on their system a that you would see a crisis out in the aftermath because people will not take it serious and we saw that event when he ran and senior officials like the head of the legislative branch was in fact that by the widest they an ounce to the media and this is something i think. There is no reason for that and at the time that you one was giving figures statics on daily infection and theyre told some countries very giving the 0 cases of current virus infection and we are seeing that those countries who are giving 0 cases they are they have thousands of cases and even some of those countries have surpassed the rot and i think this indicates that the for you ron from early days they try to give women by details in different provinces how many people who are infected. I think if it was not that much to britain clear very is the lead in this society but i think that there have been trying to give those 3 years. I think there is a political agenda behind this when in the 1st socalled words theyre talking about covering up the those information in the run theyre just referring to iran china and russia so this is about i have this need is i know. I just i just want to make sure youre making a broader point here allie who sent us the comment about we cant speak the numbers are accurate hes a nurse in toronto so that is not a western perspective that is a nurse hes were going to address that. Well from a western perspective and so there are multiple stories like that coming from u. K. Physicians right now as well that they have been clearly instructed to not record deaths and attributing it to colby and and and this has been publicly announced whereas when oftentimes when we hear these stories from iran its very difficult to verify and i think its and this is not to. Be you know dispute their personal stories but its important that when we talk about iran we have to opt in we have to question the assumptions that we are operating on because oftentimes those assumptions whether its a media discourse or an academic one doesnt really match the facts on the ground and we really have to look into data and for example again with the with the case of the u. K. And these and many other countries there are there is actual evidence provided by the our office of National Statistics and many thousands publicly announcing that there is a discrepancy whereas in the case of iran when i have talked to physicians there hasnt been any limitations on and there hasnt been any limitations for doctors to send swabs and i have worked directly with them on forming a hospital in. To iran and there there may be a delay in announcing the numbers but there isnt a discrepancy between the total number and the but what i also have to add finally that generally we are operating in and chaos of numbers globally this this Coronavirus Crisis is not an easy easy one to to keep track of so if youre not going to say i dont know that. Its going to have to birds its as mentioned its just not to say that the number is provided by iran are absolutely correct but its just to say that this is an issue everywhere but there isnt any hard to verifiable evidence to show deliberate attempts by iranians to cover up. And i appreciate you making the point of. Being on this show today out of time so thank you for joining us thank you appreciate your time and thank you thank you. If you want to help save the world. Sneeze in your elbow. Their journey to work can be a challenge on its own. But for some peruvian villagers traversing one of the worlds most dangerous roads is a risk that comes with the job. We follow the journey of these people as they get there to survive. Risking it all. On aljazeera. We will not go through what we went through for the worst. Us President Donald Trump downplays the possibility of a severe resurgence of coronavirus later in the year. Alive are in for again this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up we were slowing to look down slow on testing the u. K. Government comes under fire for its response to the pandemic during a virtual session of parliament