Wrong Prison Medication Worsens Student Activist’s Condition

Authorities Refuse to Allow Her to See a Specialist

Imprisoned student activist Maryam Shafipour has developed a severe reaction from a medication incorrectly prescribed for her for three months by prison doctors for a lymphatic condition. Prison authorities have refused to allow her to see a specialist.

An informed source who wished to remain anonymous told the Campaign that Mehdi Khodabakhshi, Supervising Assistant Prosecutor in Evin Prison, told Shafipour’s family that the refusal to allow proper treatment was in reprisal for the publicity about Shafipour’s detention.

The error in the medication was discovered when she showed the pills to doctors at Shohada Hospital in Tajrish, northern Tehran, where she was being treated for a bleeding stomach.

“The doctor told her those medications had nothing to do with her sickness and she should stop taking them,” the source said. “The doctor told her she should get an endoscopy in order to diagnose her lymphatic problem but it has been two weeks and officials have still not agreed to it.”

The source told the Campaign that in addition to lymphatic complications, Maryam Shafipour has been suffering from heart and stomach ailments throughout her 10 months of “temporary detention.”

“It’s unacceptable to Maryam’s family that their once healthy daughter has been afflicted with so many problems during less than a year in prison,” the source said.

Shafipour, a student activist and campaign worker for Mehdi Karroubi’s presidential bid in 2009, was arrested last summer and kept in solitary confinement for 67 days in Evin Prison.

She was sentenced by Judge Abolghassem Salavati of Branch 15 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court to seven years in prison for “acting against national security” and has been refused bail while waiting for a final sentence by the court of appeals.

International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran