Drugs for rare diseases to be imported to Iran after appropriate agreement

Iran plans to establish agreement with foreign countries on import of drugs for rare diseases, Mehr reported.

The director of Foundation fo Rare Diseases in Iran, Ali Davudian, speaking at the Press Conference of the Fourth International Conference on Rare Diseases, said that such drugs for rare diseases are needed in Iran.

"Hopefully soon, the Ministry of Health will grant the permission to import these drugs," he said. "The European countries are ready to produce and distribute these drugs in Iran."
Further on, Davudian said the pharmaceutical companies consider the production of such drugs cost uneffective, and therefore there's a lack of them in the country.

He added that there are about 15,000 patients in Iran, who have cards that confirm their rare diseases, and they can use the services of the Rare Diseases Foundation.

With the impact of international sanctions on Iran, the country started experiencing certain problems with imports of medicines into the country, despite the fact that the sanctions do not touch such items as food and medicine.

Iran imported 1.6 billion dollars worth of medicines and medical equipments in first 9 months of the current Iranian Calendar year, which started March 20, 2012.

The amount showed 4 per cent increase in terms of volume, while facing 7 per cent decrease in term of value.

Iran's medicine imports accounted for one million dollars in the mentioned period.

The Central Bank of Iran reported last month that the Iranian banks have allocated 2.8 billion dollars to medicine purchase in the first ten months of current Iranian calendar year.
The amount of 400 million dollars is more than in the same period previous year, Mehr News Agency reported.

In order to meet the Iranian patients' demands, some 2.5 billion dollars should be allocated to medicine purchase by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2013), said the Head of the Iranian Parliament's Health Committee, Hossein Ali Shahriari on November 5, 2012.


/Trend/