Iranians face soaring prices for medicine as US blockade and sanctions hit hard

TEHRAN — Medication prices are soaring in Iran and some treatments have become hard to find, leaving patients and their families scrambling as a US blockade and stepped-up sanctions squeeze the country’s pharmaceuticals industry.

Some medicines have more than tripled in price, further squeezing Iranians’ finances seven months into the country’s war with the United States and Israel. Prices for food and other goods have skyrocketed even as unemployment has risen and the currency, which hit a record low this week, has lost half its value.

The war has become an economic endurance test. Iran has tried to push world energy prices higher with attacks on the region’s oil shipping routes; the United States, in turn, has aimed to wreck Iran’s economy by blockading its ports since June and slapping it with increasingly tough sanctions.

Iran’s pharmaceutical industry is vulnerable because of its reliance on imports. So far there has been little sign of major shortages of medicines at Iran’s hospitals, but the difficulties are showing at pharmacies.

Gholamreza Rahmani, a Tehran welder, and his wife recently scoured several pharmacies over two days hoping to fill prescriptions for four medicines for their 12-year-old daughter, who was having stomach troubles. “Each one would have one or two items, not all of them,” he says, noting that they couldn’t find one of the medicines anywhere. The search cost him two days of wages because he couldn’t go to work.

“My daughter’s illness and the loss of income are like scissors, cutting from two sides,” he says.

Iran produces more than 80% of its medicines domestically, according to official statistics, but many of those rely on imported raw materials. Before the war, most medicines and pharmaceutical components were brought in by sea, but the American naval blockade has cut off shipping, Bahman Sabour, a member of the Tehran Pharmacies Association, tells local media.

Medical importers switched to more expensive air routes. But that access has been threatened by new US sanctions on a number of Iranian airlines, which led to some international flights being halted.

US sanctions don’t directly target medicines, but financial sanctions in place for years also hurt the pharmaceutical supply because international banks and companies often will be overly cautious and refuse transactions because they fear running afoul of sanctions, says Reza Majdzadeh, a professor at the School of Health and Social Care at the University of Essex in England.

“A medicine may be perfectly legal to sell to Iran, but a bank may refuse to process the payment,” he says. “A pharmaceutical or shipping company may simply decide that dealing with Iran is not worth the risk. … The transaction is legal on paper, but it does not happen in the real world.”

The Iranian government hasn’t said how much medicine production has fallen. But officials say it has been hurt because airstrikes damaged more than 40 pharmaceutical factories, including some producing cancer treatments.

Also, cash-strapped pharmacies sometimes struggle to keep their shelves stocked. Insurance companies have fallen behind by as much as nine months on payments to pharmacies for drug coverage because of the “current situation,” says Mohammad Jamalian, a member of parliament’s health committee.