Inflation, a shortage of raw materials and fewer imports have made medications in Iran both costly and scarce. Although Western countries claim food and medicine are exempt from sanctions, this is not true. They have also sanctioned financial institutions for purchasing them.
As a member of the United Nations, Non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and a member of IAEA, sanctions violate international norms for a member country of these organizations by offering it fewer rights in comparison to other member countries.
The United Nation reporters have described Western sanctions as a violation of human rights for patients in Iran.
Unilateral sanctions-imposed are similar to economic terrorism. Western countries give lip service to terrorism, but they have no problems to sanction countries that disagree with them.
Sanctions have targeted the health of citizens and included food and medical equipment.
The cruel Western sanctions have gone beyond oil and petroleum products, and civilian airplane parts that have killed over 3,000 passengers against the Chicago Convention.
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Sanctions were expanded to include countries that specialize in certain medical products. A report cited a Swedish pharmaceutical company to cancel its sales of bandages to patients with skin problems in Iran (it is a butterfly disease, a rare skin disease). A United Nations reporter has called this a violation of international obligations to ensure human rights for all people especially children and elderly.
Western countries have advocated human rights, especially the right to health, but they have been the main violators endangering the lives of millions of people not just in Iran but also in other countries in West Asia.
Several Western countries have funded and supported COVID-19 that have added to people's suffering.
Experts fear the latest round of sanctions will make life unbearable for ordinary citizens. Iran's MAHAK Pediatric Cancer Treatment & Research Center lacked three key chemotherapy drugs - pegaspargase, mercaptopurine and vinblastine - the report added hundreds of people who have epidermolysis bullosa, or EB, a type of disease that causes fragile, blistering skin, had difficulty accessing medicine after the sanctions were imposed, it said.
Cancer is the third-highest cause of death in Iran, greater than in most other countries in West Asia. The Program of Action for Cancer Therapy, established by the International Atomic Energy Agency, evaluated the status of Iran's National Cancer Control Program (NCCP) in 2012. It concluded that the NCCP has substantial deficits in all aspects of care, including prevention, early detection, diagnosis, treatment, palliative care and monitoring technology (M. R. Rouhollahi et al. Arch. Iran Med. 17, 222-231; 2014). There is also a serious shortage of cancer drugs in the nation.
Because of sanctions, dealers and middlemen are buying and hoarding medicines which increase the prices. People have become at the mercy of dealers in the black markets who are profiting from the scarcity of imported medicine.
Analysts and many pharmaceutical companies worry that patients with various cancer diseases will be at risk of dying while Western countries promote human rights.
From the point of view of "human rights," Western countries have no credibility with the surviving people in the Persian Gulf region and Africa. In order to work with the citizen participants in uprisings, the West must deal honestly with the historical background of its involvement in West Asia and recognize that ultimately, despite having military power on their side, political dictators, and the economic interests that support them, will not survive.
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