TEHRAN –The health ministry is planning to strengthen collaborations with the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the BRICS intergovernmental organization.

The fourth coordination and consensus meeting of the special working group for boosting cooperation with the BRICS and SCO was held on Saturday in Tehran, the health ministry website reported.

During the meeting, Mohammad-Amir Amirkhani, the deputy director of the health ministry's department for international affairs,  emphasized the need to recognize and benefit from the capabilities of the country's membership in the SCO to promote international cooperation.

The representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the SCO Secretariat, Mehrdad Kiaei, for his part, elaborated on the country’s capacities saying that Iran has a very good relationship with the SCO member states and is looking forward to playing a more significant role thanks to the strategic position of the country in the region in various fields such as energy, communication and health.

The official also evaluated the suggestion of forming special working groups in the field of health, including the advisory working group for the provision of emergency drugs or universal health coverage in the Shanghai system to be useful.

At the end of this meeting, the members of the working group discussed and reviewed the outlines of the proposed programs in the relevant areas of cooperation with the SCO.

Knowledge-based companies manufacturing medications

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.

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.

Medications such as "Cetrorlix Acetate", used for the treatment of infertility, drugs for MS patients (called Synvox), special patients (called Interferon Beta, Gamma, and Alpha), and hepatitis C patients (called pegylated interferon) are other examples of the broad efforts of Iranian researchers.

Medical equipment worth around $20 million is exported to more than 60 countries annually, according to Iran’s Union of Medical Equipment Manufacturers and Exporters.

More than 70 percent of medical equipment and 100 percent of normal hospital beds are domestically made.

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.

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.

MT/MG