Tehran's Shariat Razavi hospital: main building shut, treatment moved to the courtyard

The main building of Tehran's Shariat Razavi Hospital, one of the hospitals of the Social Security Organization, has been shut down and medical services have been moved to a limited space in the hospital's courtyard. Hossein Nateq, a member of the Social Security medical oversight committee and head of the Tehran Province Association of Construction Workers' Guilds, announced the news on Thursday, 15 October 2026.

According to Nateq, the move has reduced the hospital's capacity to admit patients and to provide specialist services. What operates in the courtyard is in practice a minimal outpatient clinic that has neither room for patients' comfort nor the capacity to offer specialist hospital services. He said the main building, with its expensive equipment behind closed doors, is deteriorating, even though this equipment and these assets belong to workers and insured people.

Unanswered questions about the closure

Nateq asked why the building is not being renovated if it has a safety problem, and why it is not being used if there is no plan to close it. He called the situation a waste of the working class's medical capital and demanded that the building be reopened with all its equipment, or that an official, reasoned report be published on the reason for the closure and the fate of the equipment. Social Security officials have so far offered no explanation about the building's safety condition or the fate of the equipment.

Ali Nasiri, head of the Tehran Municipality's Disaster Prevention and Management Organization, said on 18 August that Shariat Razavi Hospital is one of 17 unsafe hospitals in the capital and that work to make them safe was being pursued.

A worn-out healthcare system

The closure of the building of a large hospital in the capital comes as the healthcare system has grown more worn down under the pressure of war and economic crisis. Earlier, Hosseinali Shahriari, chairman of the parliament's health committee, had said patients in some state hospitals must bring their own sheets and blankets. Unsafe hospitals also have a deadly record: the fire at Tehran's Gandhi Hospital in February 2024 came after five safety warnings, and at least 9 patients died in the fire at Ghaem Hospital in Rasht in May–June 2024.

Social Security insured patients are being treated in the hospital courtyard while the main building and its equipment sit unused.