On 2 April 2026, airstrikes devastated the Pasteur Institute of Iran, a 106-year-old institution central to vaccine production, disease surveillance, outbreak response, and vital public-health functions in Iran and West Asia. The World Health Organization has confirmed that the institute sustained severe damage and can no longer deliver health services.

This is not a political statement. This is a public-health emergency.

When an institution like this is forced offline, the consequences extend far beyond one country. Diagnostics are interrupted. Surveillance weakens. Vaccine-related capacity collapses. Outbreak response is delayed. In an era of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, the collapse of scientific and health-care infrastructure creates dangerous gaps in detection, containment, and response—increasing the risk of cross-border transmission, regional spillover, and rapid outbreak spread. The first victims are children awaiting vaccination and communities whose health security depends on these systems, but the threat does not stop at any border.

For more than a century, the Pasteur Institute of Iran has served three critical functions: large-scale vaccine development and production; national reference laboratories, diagnostics, and genomic surveillance for infectious diseases including SARS-CoV-2 during the COVID-19 pandemic; and frontline outbreak response, from control of cholera to the rabies prevention, tuberculosis, AIDS and viral hepatitis. Its loss is not symbolic. It is operational, immediate, and dangerous.

The WHO has also verified more than 20 attacks on health care in Iran since 1 March 2026, resulting in at least 9 deaths among health-care personnel, including infectious-disease workers and members of the Red Crescent. Under international humanitarian law, civilian medical facilities and scientific institutions serving public health must be respected and protected at all times.

We, the undersigned, call on the international community to act urgently:

• Protect health-care facilities, medical personnel, patients, and scientific institutions, immediately.

• Assess the damage to the Pasteur Institute of Iran and its public-health consequences through an independent investigation.

• Restore laboratory capacity, diagnostics, surveillance, and vaccine-related functions before preventable outbreaks occur.

• Prevent future attacks through stronger monitoring and independent investigation.

Every day this institute remains offline, another layer of protection against infectious disease is lost. This is not only about one institution or one country. It is about the health security of an entire region and the global principle that health care and medical science must never be targets.

Sign this petition to demand urgent action to rebuild the Pasteur Institute of Iran and safeguard health care in Iran.

 —Mahmoud Reza Pourkarim, PhD

KU Leuven, Rega Institute, Laboratory of Clinical and Epidemiological Virology, Leuven, Belgium.