Health Min: Solving Peoples Medicine Problems Tops Agenda

Tehran, Aug 19, IRNA – Minister of health, treatment, and medical training said Sunday that his first priority was solving the problems with which the people are entangled for providing medicines, like scarcity, quality, and easy availability of drugs. Seyyed Hassan Qazizadeh-Hashemi in an interview with IRNA on the sidelines of the 11th government’s 1st cabinet meeting, added, “We were commissioned to present a detailed report at the next two sessions of the cabinet on the status of medicine, the country’s demands respectively, and our strategic proposals for government’s decision making.” The country’s new health minister expressed hope that after adopting the necessary decisions by the cabinet ministers we would be witnessing the elimination of the problems with which the people are entangled in providing medicine. Press reports about medical supply shortages in Iran, some of which have described devastating consequences, have been surfacing in the last two years, while debate rages on about who is responsible -- the former Iranian government, the sanctions regime, or both? Doctors in Iran are trying to fend off a creeping health care crisis caused by medicine shortages, due in part to western economic sanctions but exacerbated by government mismanagement and abuse of the system. Government hospitals and pharmacies report a widespread lack of drugs to treat cancer, multiple sclerosis, blood disorders and other serious conditions. Iranian media highlighted the shortages earlier this month through the case of a teenager who died of hemophilia after his family failed to find his medicine. Both the United States and the European Union say their embargoes do not target trade in humanitarian goods, but who in the whole world believes them – a claim proving which beats the world’s most talented. Cutting off Iran's banking system from the outside world has touched every sector of the economy, resulting in spiraling food prices, a plunging Iranian rial, deepening unemployment and now, hitting health care, analysts and traders say, so why not the problems in medicine field. Western officials appear increasingly sensitive to allegations the measures put the lives of Iranians in danger, but their sensitivity seems all the same quite hypocritical./end