Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 20
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Painkiller medicines topped the list of Iran's most consumed drugs in the last fiscal year (ended on March 20), Rasoul Dinarvand, Iranian Food and Drug Organization director said.
Acetaminophen and acetaminophen with codeine were the most consumed drugs in the period, Dinarvand said, adding these drugs are in category of over-the-counter (OTC) drugs, which are sold directly to the consumers without a prescription from a healthcare professional.
He did not share detailed information on the volume of the used medicines in the last fiscal year.
Dinarvand further said that antibiotics and diabetes treatment drugs took next place in terms of consumption volume in the 12-month period, Iran's Fars news agency reported April 20.
He added that over-dose consumption of the antibiotics has led to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in Iran.
"Almost 80 percent of the used antibiotics have no treatment result due to AMR," Dinarvand said.
It was earlier announced that Iran ranks second after China in terms of medicine consumption in Asia.
Statistics show each Iranian takes 339 tablets annually, adding that the rate of self-prescription in Iran is higher that the global standards, Mansour Rastegar Panah, an official at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the Tehran University of Medical Sciences said last September.
Tranquilizers, eye drops and antibiotics constitute a majority of self-prescribed drugs in Iran, he said.
Edited by CN
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