Fifa and AFC doctor fighting on Iran’s Covid-19 front lines shows symptoms a day after father recovers from coronavirus
- Medical officer Dr Zohreh Haratian is leading Iran’s football campaign against Covid-19 involving top players and coaches
- The CEO of Iran’s first sports medicine clinic is helping to care for patients at a mall that has been turned into a field hospital
Dr Zohreh Haratian was expecting to spend March helping Iran’s Olympic athletes with any medical needs ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Games.
Instead, she was thrown into a war zone, fighting on the front lines of her country’s battle against the Covid-19 pandemic – with her father among the patients and herself forced into quarantine after showing symptoms of coronavirus infection.
Zohreh is CEO of the Iran Mall Sports Medicine Centre in Tehran. The centre – Iran’s first sports medicine clinic – was supposed to open in March as a service to Iranian Olympic athletes seeking help for medical issues but after the Covid-19 threat in Iran worsened, part of the mall was turned into a makeshift hospital.
“As the coronavirus outbreak began, all sports activities and related matters in Iran were suspended,” Zohreh said. “It was a hard decision but necessary. Iran Mall management decided to turn a part of the complex to a field hospital to support Iran’s health authorities to fight the virus.
“They set up this specialised area equipped with 3,000 beds in less than 10 days. Myself and my colleagues were keen to help control the situation so we are working together to fight against the coronavirus.”