Iran.. Pharmaceutical Importers Union holds the government responsible for the shortage of medicines and their high prices
Tehran Iranian Workers’ News Agency (ILNA) – February 15, 2022. 16:25
Iran’s Drug Importers Association says drug shortages are caused by government intervention
The high prices of medicines and the shortage of some of them in Iran have caused many problems for patients and citizens in general.
Vice President of the Federation of Pharmaceutical Importers Mojtaba Purpur The main reason for this deficiency is the intervention and strict control of the Ministry of Health.
He added, “The Ministry of Health’s strict policies have caused problems and shortages at the present time, so that the Ministry of Health has taken over the affairs of distribution and importation of medicines.”
According to Borbour, the Department of Health and the Food and Drug Administration has also halted the process of providing statistics on drug supply and “transparency has declined” and “the shortages in the market today are in both directions,” he added.
False claims about self-sufficiency
Mr. Borbour had earlier described the claims of some government officials about self-sufficiency in domestic production of pharmaceutical raw materials as “fake” and said that “80-90% of these materials are imported from India and China”.
To that, Bahram Darayi, head of the Iranian Food and Drug Organization, said, referring to the shortage of 190 types of medicines: “The shortage of medicine for which there is a local analog, or medicine whose import causes many pharmaceutical companies to stop, we do not consider it a shortage, and some of the deficiencies were due to Corona wave, and this is also not considered a shortage.”