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.

“I switched to the Iranian-made version because of the price and availability,” she told Al Jazeera, giving only her first name. “You might not find the foreign-made version later, and you can’t keep switching because they don’t have the same quality and effectiveness.”

She’s now bracing for shortages of the Iranian-made drug, too.

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.

Prices, meanwhile, have surged.

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.

Damage from the war

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.

“Our target audience are predominantly cancer patients and people with chronic diseases,” Farahani said. “Some of the medicine we used to produce were exclusive.”

The company has since rented an alternate production line to keep output above zero, she added, even as the US’s naval blockade and sanctions drive up import costs by blocking shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and disrupting air, rail and overland routes.

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. She estimated that partial rebuilding would require at least two years and tens of millions of dollars. In the meantime, she said, the company’s researchers are working to preserve institutional knowledge that was lost when its data was destroyed.

The Israeli military said in late March that it targeted Tofigh Daru because the company was a principal supplier of fentanyl to SPND, a top Ministry of Defence research body. It accused the SPND of using the drug in chemical weapons research.

Tofigh Daru has disputed that account, saying it produced only the citrate-salt form of fentanyl, in small quantities, for approved medical uses such as surgical anaesthesia.

Farahani said Tofigh Daru also manufactured glatiramer acetate, an injectable drug used to treat relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis. The original version, Copaxone, was developed and marketed by the Israeli company Teva and long dominated the global market before generic versions were developed elsewhere.

“It is truly regrettable that many of the places targeted across Iran were research sites, and what leads to the development of a country,” she said.

Officials play down crisis

Despite the rapidly deteriorating conditions, Iranian authorities have sought to project resilience, saying the pharmaceutical industry – like other sectors of the Iranian economy – is refusing to collapse under the pressure.

“The enemy has identified medicine as one of the sensitive areas of the country, and is trying to denigrate and portray Iran’s conditions as unfavourable by releasing content in the press and social media,” Mahdi Pirsalehi, head of Iran’s Food and Drug Administration, said on Tuesday at the opening of a three-day pharmaceutical exhibition in Tehran’s sprawling Iran Mall.

He said Iran was facing fewer drug shortages than last year, but did not provide figures to support the claim.

Pirsalehi pointed out that two major pharmaceutical companies that were bombed by the US and Israel, including Tofigh Daru, were participating in the B2B exhibition, called Pharmex. The event was mostly attended by Iranian businesses, but a handful of Chinese and other counterparts had representatives.

Still, doctors in Tehran worry about the threat to public health from the drug shortages, including vaccines.

A gastroenterologist and university professor in Tehran, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described the recent rise in prices, including for domestically produced generics, as “staggering” and said it had become an insurmountable barrier for many vulnerable Iranians.

She said the government’s gradual removal of subsidised foreign currency for medical imports, and quadrillions in unpaid debts that insurers owe pharmacies, have also contributed to the current situation. According to local media, the debt amounts to about 8 quadrillion rials ($3.56bn).

“Reports that rotavirus vaccine imports have been halted because of the maritime blockade – and that influenza vaccines may soon face the same problem – represent a serious and alarming threat to nationwide efforts to prevent vaccine-preventable communicable diseases,” she said.

The doctor also warned of the impact of the worsening conditions on vulnerable groups.

“Runaway inflation, poverty, and inadequate access to essential food groups among vulnerable populations, including infants, children, and pregnant women, signal the onset and spread of malnutrition,” she said. Consequently, this raises the risk “of both communicable and non-communicable diseases, creating a vicious cycle in which malnutrition develops and progressively worsens”, she added.