Iran’s medical institutions and societies have warned against the catastrophic repercussions of the West’s sanctions on the health of patients grappling with chronic and life-threatening diseases, Press TV reports.
The Iranian medical institutions contend that the recent illegal unilateral sanctions by the US and the EU on Iran’s trade and banking sectors have made it almost impossible for them to obtain necessary medicines for patients.
Although the West’s sanction do not ban the sale of medicines to Iran, they block every financial route needed to obtain drugs for patients suffering from diseases like diabetes, kidney failure, hemophilia, multiple sclerosis, thalassemia and leukemia.
According to Iran’s Hemophilia Society the existing scarcity of coagulation factors in Iran is unprecedented over the past thirty years.
“If Western governments like the US and the EU countries have the smallest commitment to their own principles that include answering to the public opinion, now is the time when they should go and tell the people of the world that their policy making has turned Iran’s hemophiliac women and children into disabled people,” said Managing Director of Iran’s Hemophilia Society Ahmad Qavidel.
Qavidel lashed out at US President Barack Obama for endorsing further unilateral embargoes against Iran, and expressed concern that the existing circumstances would lead to a complete lack of medical products for his patients.
Although Iran produces 97 percent of its own medicines domestically, many Iranian patients with chronic and life-threatening diseases rely on the three percent of the required medicines imported from abroad.
Iran’s health authorities say that they are busy finding ways to get and distribute the drugs across the country, but the clock is ticking for the families and victims of chronic diseases.
The West’s sanctions are meant to pressure the Islamic Republic over its nuclear energy program, which Washington, Israel and some of their allies claim includes a military aspect.
Following the US-engineered sanctions on Iran’s banking, the imports of more than fifty kinds of badly needed medicines have declined drastically.
Many prominent international lawyers, including Franklin Lamb and Francis Boyle, contend that Iran is entitled to file a lawsuit with the International Court of Justice against the US, France, the UK and their allies, on behalf of all Iranian citizens being harmed by illegal and political economic sanctions.
Source: Press TV