Iran unable to get life-saving drugs due to international sanctions
Source: The Guardian
Hundreds of thousands of Iranians with serious illnesses have been put at imminent risk by the unintended consequences of international sanctions, which have led to dire shortages of life-saving medicines such as chemotherapy drugs for cancer and bloodclotting agents for haemophiliacs.
Western governments have built waivers into the sanctions regime aimed at persuading Tehran to curb its nuclear programme in an effort to ensure that essential medicines get through, but those waivers are not functioning, as they conflict with blanket restrictions on banking, as well as bans on "dual-use" chemicals which might have a military application.
"Sometimes companies agree to sell us drugs but we have no way of paying them. On one occasion, our money was in the bank for four months but the transfer repeatedly got rejected," Naser Naghdi, the director general of Darou Pakhsh, the country's biggest pharmaceutical company, told the Guardian, in a telephone interview from Tehran.
"There are patients for whom a medicine is the different between life and death. What is the world doing about this? Are Britain, Germany, and France thinking about what they are doing? If you have cancer and you can't find your chemotherapy drug, your death will come soon. It is as simple as that."
Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/13/iran-lifesaving-drugs-international-sanctions
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)This happens to EVERY nation that sanctions are levied on. We can't wander around with a gawky look of surprise and go "durrr, never knew THAT would happen!"
truth2power
(8,219 posts)kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)iandhr
(6,852 posts)It usually never hurts the regime in power and usually doesn't change there behavior.
The exception being South African government ended apartheid after pressure from international sanctions.
madrchsod
(58,162 posts)cpwm17
(3,829 posts)Duer 157099
(17,742 posts)MrSlayer
(22,143 posts)Not treating people so that rich assholes can have that second yacht or fifth home is an economic sanction. Destroying middle class jobs for that same reason is an economic sanction. Eliminating Medicaid is an economic sanction.
This is par for the course.
polly7
(20,582 posts)Sanctions serve as a necessary prelude to either regime change or war, because the conditions for removing them can either never be met or never existed in the first place. It's been proven time after time they don't impact the rulers of these nations ... it's always the citizens whose lives are destroyed. Some have described it as economic terrorism .... I agree.
Response to alp227 (Original post)
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