Page 51 - IRANRptDec19

9.1.9 ​Healthcare sector news
Trump sanctions ‘hit Iran’s supplies of cancer drugs’
South Korea ‘has ceased exporting pharmaceutical products to Iran’
The US sanctions regime directed at Iran threatens the access of some Iranians to medicines that treat diseases such as cancer and epilepsy, despite exemptions that should apply to imports of humanitarian goods, according to a report issued by Human Rights Watch (HRW).
“There’s no acute nationwide shortage of medicine in Iran at this point,” Tara Sepehri Far, a researcher at HRW and an author of the report, said at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, as cited by Reuters on October 29. “But people who are suffering from rare and special diseases are already seeing the negative effect of sanctions.”
If the situation does not change, “we expect the harm to be even greater,” Far added.
bne IntelliNews​ r​ eported​ in November last year how the biggest Iranian charity that supports children with cancer, Tehran’s MAHAK Pediatric Cancer Treatment & Research Center, had warned in ​The Lancet​ medical journal that shortages of drugs caused by US sanctions were likely to negatively impact the treatment of patients.
The HRW report said that MAHAK was lacking three key chemotherapy drugs—pegaspargase, mercaptopurine and vinblastine—in May. Hundreds of people who have epidermolysis bullosa, or EB, which causes fragile, blistering skin, had difficulty accessing medicine after the sanctions were imposed, it added.
Food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are exempt from the sanctions brought in by the US Trump administration after it unilaterally exited the multilateral 2015 international agreement drawn up to contain Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for relief from heavy sanctions. But the US measures have nevertheless deterred several foreign banks from doing business with Iran, including when it comes to humanitarian deals. Imports of grain have been slowed as well.
South Korea has stopped exporting pharmaceutical and medical equipment and related products to Iran according to the Iranian Ministry of Health, as cited by Mehr News.
Seoul, strategically allied with the US as it seeks to resolve its disputes with North Korea with which it is technically still at war even though the Korean War fighting ended in 1953, is not minded to challenge the heavy sanctions regime that Washington has directed at Iran and those wishing to do business with the country. Korea, for instance, says it has achieved full compliance with the US sanctions policy brought in in May which aims to drive all Iranian crude oil exports of world markets.
An official at the Medical Equipment Department of the Iranian Ministry of Health, Gholam Hossein Mehralian, was cited by Mehr as confirming: “According to our investigations, the South Korean government has stopped its exports of medicine and related raw materials to Iran.”
He was not quoted giving any explanation as to why such exports would have been stopped—the US sanctions are not supposed to apply to trade in food and humanitarian products. One hypothesis is that Iran is no longer able to make oil barter payments for the exports since South Korea stopped buying its crude under US pressure.
Iran has significant financial resources held in the Korean Central Bank from exports it has previously sent to South Korea. However, the US sanctions shut Iran out of the global financial system and recent reports
51​ IRAN Country Report​ December 2019 www.intellinews.com