Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Iranian first vice-president has criticized the medical treatment costs in the country and called it unacceptable.
Eshaq Jahangir said that the treatment expenses in Iran are very high and contradicts the standard, the country's Tasnim news agency reported on April 26.
Jahangiri went on to say that decreasing the treatment costs is Iranian administration's priority.
Remarking Iran's progresses in the health sector, Jahangiri said that currently Iran hosts peoples from region countries as well as European countries which came to the country for treatment.
The average family spending on medicines and treatment in Iran increased by more than 41 percent in 10 months, Iranian Cooperative, Labour and Social Welfare Minister, Ali Rabi'ee said in January.
The minister said the cost of medicines and treatment account for 70 percent of a single family's total average income. He stressed it is necessary to insure the population in line with the European standards within framework of social welfare.
Currently over 13 million citizens do not have insurance, according to Iranian media outlets. Most of them live in the Iranian provinces and villages.
Some 10 percent of the Iranian people are unable to pay medical treatment costs for hard-to-cure diseases and such expenditure has left them destitute, according to Iranian media outlets.
The U.S. and EU sanctions against Iran which cover finance, trade, energy and transport, adversely affected the country's economy. The sanctions which caused a reduction of the national currency, also created problems for the import of certain medicines to Iran.
Iranian media outlets reported that recently the country's domestic market suffered a deficit of about 90 types of medicines used for treatment of some serious diseases. The price of those medicines also rose.