Striking American healthcare workers hold signs as they march in front of the Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Medical Center in San Francisco, California, October 4, 2023. (Photo by AFP)

Tehran has called on the Western countries to be worried about a wave of strikes affecting their health sectors instead of making interventionist statements about Iran and voicing insincere concern about its women.

In an X post on Thursday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani said the United States, Britain and Germany had better be concerned about industrial actions by their medical staff.

Instead of interventionist & biased remarks & expressing insincere concern over Iranian women & girls, you’d better be concerned about US, German and UK healthcare personnel, patients & tackle their situation, he wrote.

Kan’ani also attached to its post a Reuters news that said over 75,000 union workers at healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente launched a three-day strike on Wednesday in the largest walkout by healthcare workers in US history.

Nearly 13 million patients could be impacted by the work stoppage, which involves nurses, pharmacists and lab technicians in five US states and Washington. They are demanding significant wage increases and improvements to understaffing in healthcare facilities that began during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In England, thousands of junior doctors and consultants started a three-day strike for the eighth time since March, demanding better pay and working conditions.

Also on Monday, thousands of German doctors walked off the job, complaining of bureaucracy and rising costs.