For the first time in more than a decade, the black market pharmaceutical peddlers are back on Nasser Khosrow Street near Tehran’s main bazaar. “Medicine, medicine,” the street dealers shout. “Any kind you want.”
Business is brisk. For many Iranians, such underground channels are now the only way to get needed — or even life-saving — drugs as Western sanctions over the country’s nuclear program have indirectly limited normal supplies to hospitals and pharmacies.
But for others, even the sidewalk touts are not an option. Iran’s sinking currency has more than doubled the prices of some of the imported medicines and supplies, potentially putting them out of reach for lower-income patients.
While medicine and humanitarian supplies are not blocked by the economic embargoes on Iran, the pressures are clearly evident in nearly every level of Iranian health care.
Restrictions on Iran’s access to international banking networks mean major obstacles to pay for imported medicine and equipment — the same troubles facing many businesses in need of shipments from abroad.
Meanwhile, the nation’s slumping currency — seen as collateral damage from sanctions — has driven up prices sharply. An imported wheelchair now costs 10 times more than last fall. A blood-sugar test kit has more than doubled to 540,000 rials, or about $18.
The black market still finds ways to get medical supplies through smuggling routes or by simply carrying shipments by hand, but the prices can be even higher than on regular shelves. The economic blows from sanctions are most acutely felt in key industries such as oil, which accounts for nearly 80 per cent of Iran’s foreign revenue. On Monday, the head of Iran’s parliamentary budget committee, Gholam Reza Kateb, said receipts from oil and gas exports have fallen by 45 per cent in the past nine months.