Food and Drug Administration official says unprecedented drug shortage in Iran is an "inaccurate narrative"

While on Tuesday, the vice president of the Iranian Pharmacists Association announced an unprecedented shortage of medicines in Iran, the Director General of Drugs and Controlled Substances of the Food and Drug Administration says that the unprecedented shortage of medicines in the country is "an incorrect narrative in reporting statistics."

According to IRNA news agency on Wednesday, December 14, Heydar Mohammadi emphasized: "The Food and Drug Administration's transparency in communicating some regulations should not cause distortion of information and concern for the public." According to him, the current shortage of medicines in the country is 40 items, but previously it was "300 to 400 items."

The Health Ministry official's remarks come at a time when Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has simultaneously ordered the Health Ministry to "urgently" follow up on any shortages of medicine and possible price increases.

Ali Fatemi, vice president of the Iranian Pharmacists Association, told ISNA news agency on Tuesday, December 13, that there has always been a shortage of 30 to 40 types of drugs, mostly imported, and that there is currently a shortage of over 100 to 150 types of drugs, both imported and domestically produced, in Iran, and drugs such as very simple antibiotics that were manufactured in Iran for decades have become scarce and scarce.

Also, Mohammad Reza Vaez Mahdavi, the head of the Iranian Health Economics Association, also announced in an interview with ILNA News Agency the increase in drug prices by converting 4,200 tomans into Nimai currency, saying that economic calculations show that this currency conversion "will increase the price of domestically produced drugs by four times and the price of imported drugs by seven times."

The head of the Iranian Health Economics Association says that removing the 4,200-toman currency from the 13th government's 2014 budget bill is synonymous with devaluation of the national currency and is contrary to the country's macro policies of maintaining the value of the national currency. In his opinion, the government wants to cover its budget deficit by doing so.

Source: Voice of America