TEHRAN - The U.S. sanctions which prevent Iran’s access to humanitarian items, including medical equipment and medicine, have killed over 500 thalassemic patients in the country, said Younes Arab, the managing director of the Iranian Thalassemia Society.

“Currently, there are 23,000 thalassemic patients in the country, most of whom need to use these drugs throughout their life,” Arab said on Monday.

He added that since the beginning of the U.S.-imposed sanctions, the restrictive measures have created many challenges for Iranian thalassemic patients and have had a direct impact on the treatment of such patients, the main part of which is related to the provision of their life-saving medicines, the portal of the High Council for Human Rights reported on Saturday.

Arab said that than 540 patients with thalassemia have fallen victim to the sanctions since May 2018, when the U.S. administration under former President Donald Trump withdrew from a 2015 landmark deal with Iran, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and re-imposed draconian sanctions against the country.

“Some European companies supplying raw materials for the production of pharmaceuticals have directly sanctioned Iran and we are also facing problems for the transfer of foreign currency. Therefore, we are dealing with serious problems for the production of (necessary) drugs," he said.

He stressed that a main reason for the failure to provide necessary drugs for thalassemic patients is due to sanctions, and said, "Since the beginning of the current [Iranian] year, no medicine for thalassemic patients has been imported and the production of medicine in the main company producing drugs for thalassemia patients has stopped."

World leaders have time and again called on Washington to exempt humanitarian and medicinal supplies from the list of its anti-Iran sanctions but to no avail.

Thalassemia is an inherited blood disorder caused when the body does not make enough of a protein called hemoglobin, an important part of red blood cells. The disorder results in large numbers of red blood cells being destroyed, which leads to anemia.

MG