TEHRAN – The head of Iran’s Union of Medical Equipment Manufacturers and Exporters has said 70 percent of the medical equipment used in the country is made by domestic producers, IRIB reported.

According to Abdolreza Yaghoubzadeh, currently, 100 percent of normal hospital beds, more than 95 percent of special ICU and CCU beds, and more than 85 percent of operating room medical equipment, such as anesthesia machines, ventilators, electrocautery, and other equipment are manufactured inside the country with advanced technical knowledge.

Putting the current imports of the mentioned products at about $1.0 billion, Yaghoubzadeh said if the government cuts the subsidized foreign currency allocated for the import of medical equipment, the annual imports of such items will be reduced to $600,000.

The official noted that allocating subsidized foreign currency to the import of medical equipment has resulted in the surplus imports of such products so that the imports are more than the actual needs of the country.

According to Yaghubzadeh, considering Iran’s population and per capita income of the people, the medical equipment market of the country is less than one percent of the global market for such products.

“If we divide the world’s medical equipment market which is 400 billion dollars to the population, one percent of this figure that is four billion dollars would be the value of Iran's medical equipment market,” he explained.

Yaghubzadeh further noted that, currently over $3.0 billion worth of medical equipment is produced inside the country, and about $1.0 billion is imported.

According to the official, there are currently over 1,000 medical equipment production units active across the country of which up to 400 are knowledge-based or startups.

“We export to more than 60 foreign countries, and many European countries are among the export destinations of our products; the value of our exports in the past few years has been up to 30 million dollars,” he said.

EF/MA