TEHRAN – Iran is now manufacturing pharmaceutical raw materials as well as medicines in many countries, including Russia, the head of the public relations office at the Food and Drug Administration said, Mehr reported on Wednesday.

“Today over 97 percent of the demand of medicine in Iran is met by domestic companies and just 3 percent, equaling 30 percent in terms of foreign exchange value, is imported,” Kianoush Jahanpour said.

The imported medicines are either those which their technological knowledge for manufacturing is not available in Iran or are of higher technology methods for production in other countries, he added.

Many nontechnology, biotechnology and chemical medicines are manufactured inside Iran, he explained.

The health ministry supports human resources and knowledge-based potentialities in order to stop importing of medicine from abroad, he said.

The Iranian-made medicine is available at one-fiftieth of price in comparison with imported ones, he added.

The Food and Drug Administration has already banned importing 60 items of medicine to Iran.

The number of the banned medicines would be increased in the future due to capabilities of Iranian pharmaceutical companies, the spokesman of the Food and Drug Administration, Shahram Shoeibi, said.

The medicines include ones related to cardiovascular, hormone, eye, and skin diseases as well as some antibiotics, he explained.

He said that there would be no problem to supply these medicines to the Iranian market.

Iran’s pharmaceutical capacity

On June 22, the first Iranian pharmaceutical factory in Turkey that produces recombinant protein drugs and biologic medicines was inaugurated.

CinnaGen Pharmaceutical Group launched the new production line in Turkey with the name of CinnaGen ilaç.

The factory produces 22 types of medicine that are mostly used for treating chronic, life-threating diseases such as cancer, osteoporosis, multiple sclerosis (MS), as well as the nervous system and blood diseases.

According to the acting director of the Food and Drug Administration, Iranian medicines are exported to 30 countries.

In June, the Food and Drug Administration announced that a special department for “national production” might be opened to further support the domestic production of medicines.

In February, secretary of biotech development center (BioDC) at science and technology vice-presidency, Mostafa Qanei, said that there were 146 biopharmaceuticals in the global market, of which, 22 items are available in Iran which are monoclonal antibodies and recombinant proteins.

The BioDC announced that the domestically manufacturing of biotechnology products has so far saved one billion dollars for the country. In October 2018, the center announced that medicine is on top of the list of exports of biotechnology products in Iran.

SB/MG