In Iran, patients with unique and critical diseases are experiencing intimately suffer from a dire drug and medicine supply state. With the rampant inflation rate and the spreading of poverty, most of the population cannot get their medicine, and most of them are forced to sell most of their belongings to get these medications.
The regime officials’ acknowledgments reveal the depth of this corruption. In an interview with the state-run Mehr news agency on June 5, the former director of the Hemophilia Center laid bare the regime’s disastrous medicine policy.
“Every time we reflect news about the scientific achievements to the Iranian hemophilia community, the hemophilia patients ask when these drugs will finally be available. For example, the medicine ‘Hamlibra,’ which should be injected once a month, had entered the world pharmaceutical market for many years but was not even added to the country’s drug list.”
He went on to acknowledge how monopolism of the country’s domestic medicine and drugs, especially for patients with critical diseases like hemophilia, and added: “The thalassemia community of the country has been suffering for years from this unreasonable support of domestic production, and they are following their protests on the streets.”
The country’s drug industry has become a source of the regime’s corruption, mainly regulated by people selected due to nepotism. And this business has flourished the drug smuggling in the country led by these people.
In the regime’s massacre of the people with the help of the coronavirus, it was seen that world-renowned vaccines deliberately banned by the regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei were so widely available in the drug trafficking market that it was ridiculous to deny the involvement of government officials.
This is a not ending story with much bitterness and human losses for the Iranian people. Even during the catastrophic earthquakes and floods of the past years, the tents donated by other countries were sold on the famous smuggle market of Naser Khosrow.
In the latest example, the state-run newspaper Jahan-e Sanat, in an article entitled ‘Stone Age Anesthesia’ on June 20, 2020, revealed the crisis of shortage of anesthetic medicine and reported that despite the scarcity of these drugs in public hospitals, all high-quality drugs are available at the Naser Khosrow market at multiple prices.
In an interview with Jahan-e-Sanat on June 20, 2022, the chairman of the board of directors of the Tehran Private Hospitals Association admitted: “Unfortunately, all the drugs that exist in the public sector enter the black market through relationships.”
For years, news of drug trafficking out of Iran has been circulating in the media. According to the Fars state news agency, this has become so critical that the amount of drug smuggling out of Iran has exceeded its official export rate. The Fars news agency confirmed this on September 21, 2020. Then IRIB confirmed it on March 29, 2022, too.
Earlier, the state-run news agency Mehr reported on October 14, 2021, that a member of the board of directors of the Syndicate of Owners of the Iranian Human Drug Industries, in a press conference, announced the sale of Iranian drugs smuggled in Africa at one-third of the world price. He also acknowledged that 10 to 20 percent of the country’s medicine is smuggled.
The state-run Jahan-e-Sanat newspaper, under the headline ‘The last breaths of the pharmaceutical industry’ on June 19, examines the ‘economic masterpieces’ of Ebrahim Raisi’s government and the effects of rising inflation and rising drug production costs on this industry.
Impressive that the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Syndicate of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers asked the pharmacy students to fight the corruption and nepotism in this industry. In the Gathering of pharmacy students on March 12, 2022, he said:
“You are the engine of development and the starting point and savior of this country, block the way to rent-seeking and mafia, and fight the illiterates who, through influence, have monopolized the healthy flow of this industry and direct it to their own and their children’s profits.”
The only thing he has forgotten is that Iran has the most rate of brain drain in the world. And while the regime is suppressing the students in any way, how could they help the country fight corruption and improve development?
