Iran has announced plans for women-only ambulances, leading to criticism by several officials and raising fears for women's safety.

Nahid Khodakarmi, the former head of the Health Committee of the Tehran City Council, warned that the regime's latest plan to separate genders in the emergency room has no other result than "wasting resources, imposing costs and disorder".

She described it as “harmful, time-consuming, and costly", risking women's access to emergency healthcare in the most vulnerable times.

After the head of the country's emergency department, Jafar Miaadfar, announced the new plan for both emergency room and ambulance segregation, Khodakarmi called it a new area of gender segregation.

"Emergency services are not segregated by gender anywhere in the world," she said on Monday. "I don't know the reason behind emphasizing on gender segregation in different areas of the healthcare system .... gender segregation in the general sense is not possible in the emergency room."

Miaadfar announced on Saturday that in the new special ambulances for women, the ambulance driver will be a man, but both technicians will be women.

Defending the decision, Miaadfar said the measure was approved by the Supreme Council of Health in a session with President Ebrahim Raisi in attendance, highlighting that the plan has been implemented in several cities and will become operational throughout the country’s metropolitan areas in the near future.