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presented a report to the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2012 in
which he warned that international sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran
had greatly affected everyday life of Iranian people and faced them with essential
shortages, including with regard to supply of medicines. He noted that despite the
fact that they had been given all necessary permits, pharmaceutical companies had
stopped exporting medicines to Iran due to problems for transfer of money, which
had caused extreme shortage of those medicines, which were used for treatment
of such diseases as cancer, MS, heart diseases as well as respiratory ailments
and multiple sclerosis (MS).
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The situation was even worse for those medicines,
No more prosthesis for Iranians
My elderly mother had a broken hip following an accident and
needed a long-stem hip prosthesis since she was 81, and had
a history of amputation. I was fortunate enough to be able to
borrow the huge amount of money needed for the prosthesis
on time. It cost 80 million Rials (about 2,100 dollars), which was
13 times my monthly salary! And again, I was fortunate that the
accident happened three days before the American company
called “Striker” decided to stop selling orthopedic prostheses to
Iran because of the sanctions. Who else was unfortunate? Six
more patients, among many others, whose surgery had been
canceled by the hospital surgeon at Tehran Fajr Hospital. Exactly
the day after my mother had been operated, Striker officials
announced that they would not sell prostheses to Iranian
hospitals anymore. It happened right before my eyes and since
I was so busy with my mother, I never found out about the fate
of other patients whose operations were canceled as a result of
sanctions.