TEHRAN – Producing 20 drugs, including radiopharmaceuticals, anticancer drugs, sedatives, prostate cancer detection drugs, eye solutions, and traditional medicine, by knowledge-based companies has saved one million dollars for the country.

Six out of the mentioned drugs were related to cancers and skin diseases, IRNA reported.

Last year (March 2023-March 2024), insufficient drugs decreased from 420 items to 100 items. Most of the drugs were antibiotics, serums, suspensions, neurology and psychiatry drugs, and anesthetics.

Some 600 medical equipment companies are active in the country, producing around 99 percent of the medicine supplied to the domestic market. Medical equipment manufacturers in the country produce and supply over 10,000 types of medical equipment to domestic and foreign markets. Now, various pieces of laboratory equipment are manufactured at prices much lower than the same foreign products.

A total of 442 rare diseases have been identified in the country according to a recent report by the Rare Disease Foundation.

The incidence of rare diseases is very low to the extent that maybe one or two people with a certain rare disease are present in the country. Some rare diseases such as ‘butterfly skin or EB’, ‘Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA)’, ‘Metabolic diseases’, ‘Autism’, and ‘Dystrophies' are among the most common cases in the country.

In this regard, the National Rare Disease Day is held annually on the eighth day of Esfand (the last Iranian calendar month), which falls on February 26, to raise awareness and generate support for individuals with rare diseases and their families.

The Day was approved to be designated as the national day of rare disease in the national calendar in May 2021.

Iranian knowledge-based companies have succeeded in producing recombinant drugs which are mainly used for treating hard-to-treat diseases such as cancers, MS, hemophilia, and viral diseases.

More than $4.3 billion was allocated for importing medicine and medical equipment in the past Iranian calendar year that ended on March 19.

The sum increased by 26 percent compared to its preceding year’s figure of $3.4 billion, ISNA reported.   

Last year, some 320 trillion rials (about $6.4 million) was also allocated for the health sector, an increase of 80 trillion rials ($1.6 million) year on year.
On January 13, the head of Iran’s Union of Medical Equipment Manufacturers and Exporters said that medical equipment worth around $20 million is exported to more than 60 countries annually.

More than 70 percent of medical equipment and 100 percent of normal hospital beds are domestically made, IRNA quoted Abdolreza Yaqoubzadeh as saying.

Also, over 95 percent of specific ICU and CCU beds and more than 85 percent of operating room medical equipment such as anesthesia machines and other equipment are manufactured with cutting-edge technology in the country, he added.

Yaqoubzadeh went on to say that the country's need for medical equipment production is three to four billion dollars per year, some one billion dollars of which is imported.

MG