Imam Reza (AS) Hospital

Health Minister Kamran Baqeri-Lankarani on Thursday said that the quality of services offered by health centers nationwide is higher than previous years.
Speaking to Mehr News Agency on the sidelines of a ceremony marking the inauguration of a comprehensive plan to upgrade Imam Reza (AS) Hospital’s equipment and renovate its buildings, he expressed hope that the plan would become operational within three years.
He recalled that since 2007 grounds have been paved for health centers nationwide to offer specialized medical services.
The minister referred to the increase in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and Critical Care Unit (CCU) units nationwide from 900 to 2,000 and noted, “We still have a long way to go to win the satisfaction of the people. Some shortfalls will be removed upon allocation of the necessary budget. If funds are available, we shall implement the plan for treating patients who have refractory diseases more efficiently than last year.“
Elsewhere, Baqeri-Lankarani said that Imam Reza (AS) Hospital has a high status in the country’s history of medical services.
“This hospital is unique in terms of the scale and scope of services it renders,“ he pointed out.

Imam Reza (AS) Hospital is unique in terms of the scale and scope of services it renders.

He expressed gratitude over the establishment of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) department in the hospital in cooperation with the private sector.
Meanwhile, governor-general of Khorasan Razavi, Mohammad Javad Mohammadizadeh, addressing the same ceremony said, “Given the reputation of Imam Reza (AS) Hospital, upgrading its equipment and renovating its buildings is a must. Upon the ratification of the comprehensive plan, we have an efficacious program for expanding the activities of the hospital.“
The hospital has skilled manpower and offers quality services to both locals and pilgrims who visit the holy shrine of Imam Reza (AS).

Pope Benedict XVI said he was “deeply sorry’ for the sexual abuse of children by Australia’s Catholic clergy, delivering a strongly-worded apology Saturday that described their acts as evil and a grave betrayal of trust.
“I would like to pause to acknowledge the shame which we have all felt as a result of the sexual abuse of minors by some clergy and religious in this country,“ Benedict said during an address at a Mass in Sydney, AP reported.
“I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured. I assure them as their pastor that I too share their suffering,“ he said.
“Those responsible for these evils must be brought to justice.“ Benedict has expressed regret before about the clergy abuse scandal that has rocked the church in recent years--notably during a visit to the United States in April when he also met privately with a small number of victims. But the language of Saturday’s apology was stronger than the pope’s comments in the United States.
There was no immediate word whether Benedict would meet with victims of clergy abuse during his Australia trip, which ends Monday.
Support groups for victims of church abuse in Australia, whose numbers are not known but who activists say are in the thousands, said a papal apology is not enough and demanded the church end what they say is a continuing cover-up of the scale of the problem and stop fighting compensation claims lodged in civil courts.
“Sorry is not enough. Victims want action, not just words,“ the Broken Rites group said in a statement posted Saturday on its website.

Some cancer patients may find that putting their emotions down in writing helps improve their pain and general well-being, a study suggests.
Such writing, part of a concept called “narrative“ medicine, has been seen as a way to aid communication between seriously ill patients and their doctors, Reuters reported.
But the act of writing, itself, may also help patients better understand themselves and their needs, according to the study team, led by Dr. M. Soledad Cepeda of Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston.
To look at the question, they randomly assigned 234 cancer patients to one of three groups: one that was asked to perform axnarrative writing; one that filled out a standard questionnaire about pain symptoms; and one that stayed with standard care only.
All of the study patients were suffering from at least moderate levels of pain from their disease. Those in the narrative-writing group were asked to spend 20 minutes per week, for three weeks, writing about the ways in which cancer was affecting their daily lives.
At the study’s start and then once a week for eight weeks, patients in all three groups completed a standard questionnaire about their well-being and rated their pain levels.
In general, Cepeda’s team found, patients in the writing group who were open about their emotions showed less pain and greater well-being over time than the rest of the study subjects.
Such effects were not seen in patients whose writing was relatively unemotional, the researchers report in the Journal of Pain & Symptom Management.
The findings suggest that the emotional release of writing, specifically, is what helps patients deal with their cancer pain, according to Cepeda’s team. However, they add, it’s also possible that the most seriously ill patients find it more difficult to write about their feelings.