Medicine shortages grow in Iran as US tightens sanctions, blockade

Tehran, Iran – Farah, a 59-year-old resident of Iran’s capital Tehran, used to fill her autoimmune prescription with a Swiss-made drug. Now she takes the Iranian-made version and worries that, too, may soon be in short supply. Iranian news outlets have reported growing shortages of medicine for cancer and other serious illnesses amid a crisis in Iran’s pharmaceutical sector, as the United States leans on military pressure, sanctions and a naval blockade to squeeze Iranians.

About 800 pharmaceutical products are currently in short supply nationwide, including 90 considered essential and life-saving, according to Hadi Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Iranian Pharmacists Association. Four hundred of those drugs, he told local media last week, are manufactured inside Iran. The state-run Mehr News Agency reported last week that the price of gabapentin, used to treat epilepsy and nerve pain, has risen 220 percent over the past year.

Pain and fever pill Acetaminophen has risen by 375 percent, antibiotic Amoxicillin by 285 percent, and anti-depressant Fluoxetine by 100 percent. Insulin, a daily necessity for diabetics, now costs up to six times what it did a year ago. The increases are part of a wider inflationary spiral in the country.

Iran’s inflation rate is among the highest in the world, with the cost of essential food items up more than 123 percent year-on-year as of August, and several staples like cooking oil more than tripling in price. For years, Iran has pursued self-sufficiency in medicine, as it has in other industries, building domestic capacity to manufacture active pharmaceutical ingredients, equipment and finished drugs. But the sector still heavily relies on imports for a number of critical ingredients, equipment and rare medications.

Washington’s years-long “maximum pressure” sanctions have hobbled the financial and logistics networks facilitating procurement of medical imports, leading to significantly higher costs despite existing humanitarian exemptions. The shortages have worsened since the US and Israel’s war on Iran, which began in February, damaged and destroyed some 44 pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies. According to Iranian officials, some 50 industry workers were also killed or wounded.

One of the main pharmaceutical firms bombed during the war was Tofigh Daru, which is owned by Iran’s largest pension fund. Maryam Farahani, the company’s director of sales, told Al Jazeera that Israeli air strikes had struck all of its research and production lines, including those producing peptide and narcotic active ingredients as well as anticancer drugs. Farahani said databases and server sites, as well as numerous specialised equipment bought over 26 years of operation, were destroyed as a result of the Israeli air strikes.