iranian red crescent

Referring to the Red Crescent activities to combat COVID-19 outbreak, IRCS president said: “The Red Crescent joined the country's health organs and provided a variety of effective services since the COVID-19 outbreak in Iran.

“The Red Crescent followed up on public training in a suitable way in social networks and before the spread of the virus in Iran, it published preventive training in different languages in the form of infographics, posters, etc.”

The training has received 56 million views so far, according to the Iranian Red Crescent. Furthermore, due to the high stress of the people from the outbreak of COVID-19, the Iranian Red Crescent tried to reduce the social stress caused by the disease by launching the corona.ir website, in which more than 10 million people have participated in the online coronavirus test.

“Iranian Red Crescent also exploited two million volunteers, relief workers and young people as members of the Red Crescent to fight the virus through checking and screening passengers for the coronavirus,” added Dr, Hemmati.

IRCS president also outlined the Red Crescent activities on providing hygiene parcels for 500,000 special patients and patients with cancer, as well as providing food parcels for needy families.

He said that currently one of the urgent needs is to provide ventilators, 100 of which have so far been provided with the help of donors, but there are still shortcomings in this field and some other hospital equipment, such as ICU beds, etc.

Dr, Hemmati said that despite all the problems caused by sanctions, we were able to overcome this disease and the Iranian Red Crescent was ready to share its experiences over the covid-19 with Swiss scientific and research centers.

He also appreciated the Swiss government’s humanitarian aids to the Iranian flood-affected people as well as 500,000 CHF that the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) has allocated to the Iranian Red Crescent to fight COVID-19.

For his part, Switzerland Ambassador in Tehran referred to close collaboration between the Swiss embassy and government with the Iranian Red Crescent, and said: “In our opinion, the Red Crescent Society of Iran is one of the main partners that has been very effective in dealing with the dangers of the covid-19 virus.”

“Swiss companies operating in Iran that are active in the financial sector and sending medical equipment are willing to cooperate with the Iranian Red Crescent, so the list of needed items should be announced so that we can transfer them to these companies,” added Mr, Leitner.

He also referred to Iran's need for ventilators, and said: “One of the ventilator manufacturers is active in Switzerland, which has doubled its production due to high demand in countries around the world, but we ask the Swiss government to help Iran in this regard.”

Switzerland ambassador to Tehran also emphasized that Switzerland's efforts were aimed at expanding its communication and interaction with the Iranian Red Crescent Society for the development of humanitarian services, given the importance of humanitarian diplomacy.