Tehran, Iran, July 19
Trend:
Iran's Health Minister Saeed Namaki said that medicine shortage in the country is minimum, only 20 items.
"The medicines that are rare in the market are limited and they are unnecessary items," said Namaki, Trend reports citing ILNA.
"The imports of medicines that can be produced domestically have been banned but some of our colleagues prescribing these rare items for patients," he added.
"The patients presume there is a shortage of medicine in the market since they cannot find these items. Fortunately there is no shortage of necessary medical items,“ he noted.
"Although we are not self-sufficient in producing some of the medical items, but considering the necessary medicines there are no problems in domestic production or even imports, despite sanctions," he added.
Some Iranian doctors have previously claimed that the medicines which are domestically produced, similar to the foreign versions, have allergic side effects, hence they have to prescribe rare foreign medicine.
Namaki labeled such comments as "unfair".