The Iranian pharmaceutical market is in crisis and experiencing shortages. These shortages sometimes extend to simple cold tablets and saline solutions, but certain medications are always in crisis, such as specialty drugs, insulin, or chemotherapy drugs.
This is while the head of Iran’s Food and Drug Administration claims that 99 percent of the country’s medicine is domestically produced, but the state of drug shortages shows that the volume of production has not been able to meet the country’s pharmaceutical and healthcare needs.
Given the market shortages and the level of demand, smuggled imported drugs are being bought and sold in the black market and online.
Insulin medication is not available in pharmacies and can only be found at the Red Crescent pharmacy; similarly, Formetin is available in the black market. Medications for cancer patients are also only available in the black market.
From Self-Sufficiency in Production to a Medicine Crisis
While government officials claim that pharmaceutical factories are operating at full capacity, the condition of pharmacies does not confirm this.
Seyed Heidar Mohammadi, Deputy Minister of Health and head of the Food and Drug Administration, claimed that a large portion of drugs are available domestically. He stated, “Many anticancer drugs are produced domestically and with high quality. One percent of the country’s required drugs are supplied through imports, and this one percent accounts for 13 percent of the total monetary value of our drugs.”
Accordingly, Iran only has a one percent need for drug imports, but the difficulties people face in procuring and supplying medicine do not confirm this 99 percent domestic production claim.
The Etemad newspaper reported drug shortages in various cities and public hospitals. Saline solution is rationed in a public hospital in Isfahan due to shortages. Shortages of narcotic drugs, declining drug quality, and the lack of surgical blades and gloves are other points mentioned in this report.
In July 2024, Mohammad Abdozadeh, chairman of the board of the Syndicate of Human Pharmaceutical Industries, spoke about the problems in the production sector: “The Central Bank has made the conditions for receiving facilities more difficult, and now we neither have the ability to receive receivables nor facilities. In this situation, registering orders and obtaining foreign currency for importing raw materials becomes very difficult.”
According to him, nearly $600 million of the allocated foreign currency for the pharmaceutical sector was canceled last year due to a lack of liquidity. Pharmaceutical companies are facing a liquidity crisis, and insurance companies are also not fulfilling their commitments.
In such a situation, even if the capability for production exists in the country, it seems that due to a shortage or lack of liquidity, this cannot be realized, and patients are the victims.
Aside from these problems, on July 22, Abdozadeh, in a letter to the First Vice President, announced that due to the lack of tariff code determination for 700 items on the country’s pharmaceutical list, pharmaceutical companies are unable to clear raw materials that are in customs.
Producing 99 percent of the country’s medicine may be possible with imported raw materials, but now these are locked in customs, and manufacturers warn that a drug crisis in the country is imminent. Currently, only specific pharmacies have medicines like insulin, and as one member of parliament mentioned, its distribution in small towns is very limited.
A Wave of Drug Crisis is on the Way
Vahid Mahalati, vice chairman of the board of directors of the Drug and Supplement Distribution Companies Association, has predicted that a drug crisis will occur in the last quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of 2025. He said, “Four billion dollars was supposed to be allocated to medicine and equipment. If we accept the government’s statistics that $700 million was allocated in three months, and this trend continues for other quarters (i.e., multiplied by four), we will not reach the figure of four billion dollars.”
If online sellers delay finalizing an order for an hour, they erase all chat and negotiations and will not respond again, leaving no trace.
The heartbeat of the market is in the hands of brokers, and they are aware of market shortages; therefore, they supply the shortages at high prices.
In this simple manner, the brokers’ market thrives day by day, especially as the drug situation continues to worsen and dark days for patients lie ahead.
According to Mojtaba Burbur, vice president of the Drug Importers Union, more than 60 percent of the country’s pharmaceutical market is in the hands of semi-governmental or public pharmaceutical companies. These state-owned companies profit from this black market at the expense of Iranian citizens’ lives.
