US sanctions cut off Iranians' access to medicine

Health care ought to be affordable and accessible with this ambitious goal, Iran set up many drug factories. Today it is a world leader in the production of generic drugs.

They have even branched out into making cancer drugs. Middle east's biggest cancer drug producer is in Iran. But over the past two years, drug production has dropped. Vital cancer drugs went off the shelf drug companies attribute this to the US Sanctions.

The import restriction is not on drug salts alone equipment used by the drug companies face sanctions under the label "dual-use".

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Procuring spare parts for existing machines has become an uphill task what Iran has lost due to sanctions is immense.

The US exported 26 million dollars worth pharmaceutical products to Iran. Since 2018, this has fallen to over 8 million dollars.

French pharmaceutical exports till 2018 were 218 million dollars after sanctions, they fell by 25 per cent to 164 million dollars.

Exports from Swiss pharma companies were 240 million dollars in 2017 within a year, the business dropped to 167 million dollars.

According to Dr Reza Mostofi, general manage of Actoverco production plant "One of the other products that we are producing is Rituximab which is a monoclonal antibody; Rituximab is used in leukaemia, in breast cancer and many other types of cancer, that's the main immunotherapy drug for the patients. So for some times, we haven't been able to import the ingredients of this material so our line for Rituximab is now stopped."

"In radiotherapy or nuclear medicine, these sanctions have had an impact. We are producers of nuclear medicine ourselves, but again, some aspects of them have been sanctioned under the pretence of multiple functions," said Kianoosh Jahanpoor, Iran Health Ministry Spokesman.

Sanctions impact on Iran

The United States of America
$ 26 million: US pharma exports till 2018
$ 8.6 million: US pharma exports in 2018-19

France
Pre-sanction: $ 218 million pharma exports
Post-sanction: $ 164 million (drop of 25%)

Switzerland
Pharma exports in 2017: $ 240 million in 2017
Pharma exports in 2018: $ 167 million in 2018