The statements of the regimes’ president, Ebrahim Raisi, regarding the shortage of medicine for specific patients, have led to criticism from a wide spectrum of the people.
In his speech at the “Thirteenth National Elite Conference,” Ebrahim Raisi responded to the parents of individuals with special diseases who had protested against the shortage of medicine, saying, “First, life is in the hands of God,” and “Second, how do you know that we cannot produce the necessary medicines ourselves?”
Of course, the regime’s senior officials have made such similar statements before. For example, Hassan Ghazizadeh Hashemi, the Minister of Health of Hassan Rouhani’s government, had said to a baker who complained about the medical and physiotherapy expenses, “Massage it yourself!”
Recently, Bahram Eynollahi, the regime’s Minister of Health, claimed that Iranian medicines will be exported to “40 countries around the world,” and many countries consider Iranian medicines to be “effective and successful.”
The remarks of Raisi and his Minister of Health about the production of Iranian medicine are being discussed while the country has repeatedly faced the problem of shortage and high prices of medicine, and the medicine for special patients is still scarce.
Many people lose their lives due to the lack of medicine, including Akram Amini, a cancer patient journalist who complained about the lack of cancer medicine and eventually passed away.
In June, Younes, the head of the Iranian Thalassemia Association, said that the mortality rate of this disease has increased six fold since May 2018, and annually 260 thalassemia patients lose their lives due to “shortage and unavailability” of medicine.
Arab added that Iranian-made medicines do not work for these patients.
The use of substandard raw materials in the production of domestic medicines and the side effects resulting from their consumption are among the issues raised regarding domestically produced medicines.
The regime’s authorities blame the problem of medicine shortage on Western sanctions. However, some experts in the past have pointed out that authorities, under the pretext of sanctions, prevented the import of the drug “Desferal” for thalassemia patients so that the “low-quality” domestic product, including the production of the “Osve” company, could be sold.
The United States has stated that the export of humanitarian items, especially medical and even sanitary supplies, to Iran is exempt from sanctions. According to official statistics from the European Union, 27 members of this union exported over $2.4 billion to Iran from March to November 2021.
Iran ranks 85th in terms of pharmaceutical exports worldwide.
Data from the “World’s Top Exporters” website in 2022 shows that Israel, with $3.471 billion in sales, ranks 21st globally and first in the region in terms of pharmaceutical exports. According to this statistic, Turkey ranks 29th, Cyprus ranks 46th, Pakistan ranks 52nd, and the United Arab Emirates ranks 61st.
Behram Eynollahi, in his recent statements, once again referred to Iran as “one of the most successful countries in the region” in controlling COVID-19 and mentioned the production of six domestic COVID-19 vaccines.
Official mortality statistics obtained from countries by “Our World in Data” – which, according to experts, are significantly lower than the actual figures in Iran – show that Iran has had the highest COVID-19 mortality rate in the region.
In terms of vaccination, a recent study conducted by Iranian researchers focusing on “vaccination speed” has been published, which indicates that if Iran follows the COVID-19 vaccination model of Turkey, it could prevent an additional 50,000 deaths compared to the current mortality rate.
According to the same model, if Iran adopts the vaccination model of Bahrain, it could prevent 75,300 deaths, especially among individuals over the age of 50.
The preference for domestic vaccine production and the prohibition of Western vaccines by Ali Khamenei were among the reasons for the slow pace of COVID-19 vaccination in Iran, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of people.
