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The Pasteur Institute of Iran in Tehran was hit on Thursday amid US and Israeli bombardment of the country, causing significant damage to the century-old institution and rendering it "unable to continue delivering health services", the World Health Organisation said.
The institute, one of a network of Pasteur Institutes worldwide, played "an important role in protecting and promoting population health, including in emergencies", according to WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Two of the institute's departments were working with the WHO as "collaborating centres", Dr Tedros said in a post on X.
The Pasteur Institute of Iran is the oldest medical facility in the country, established in 1920 after the First World War, at a time when contagious and chronic illnesses were spreading.
It was set up on land donated by the late Iranian aristocrat Abdol Hossein Mirza Farmanfarma, who said at that time that its purpose was to "allow the necessary serums and vaccines against such diseases as smallpox, plague, cholera, diphtheria, rabies and others to be manufactured at this place".
Iranian-American political scientist Vali Nasr decried the attack on an "icon of Iran’s health care system" and referred to US President Donald Trump's threat to take Iran "back to the Stone Age".
"Destroying it could have no other purpose than assaulting Iran’s history, erasing the history of its modernisation and development – take Iranians back to the Stone Age," he said in a post on X.
The WHO has verified at least 20 attacks on Iran's healthcare system since March 1, Dr Tedros said. Nine people were killed in these attacks, including an infectious diseases health worker and a member of the Iranian Red Crescent Society worker.
The attack on the Pasteur Institute came two days after Iran said the Tofigh Daru pharmaceutical complex in Tehran, "which produced medicines for treating cancer and multiple sclerosis", had been bombed. The Delaram Sina Psychiatric Hospital in Iranian capital was hit on March 29.
"Attacks on health have also been recorded outside Tehran, including on 21 March, when an explosion nearby Imam Ali Hospital in Andimeshk, Khuzestan province, led to the facility’s evacuation and cessation of services," Dr Tedros said.
