Voices
medicines. Cancer patients, sufferers of multiple sclerosis and
those with numerous others serious conditions have turned to buying medicine on the black market
for exorbitant prices, and at times
not finding them at all. But I never
thought there would be shortages
of medicines as routine as birth
control. Juggling requests and
questions from an anxious crowd
of other customers, the pharmacist
barely looked back at me: “Ma’am,
the only thing I can offer you is Yaz
or Yasmin. That’s the best we have
in Iran right now.”
I was deeply worried, as Yaz
was bad news. I had taken it four
years ago only to develop blood
clots and extreme mood swings,
and gained weight. Yaz and Yasmin are the same birth control
brands that now face major lawsuits in the United States because
they have been linked to heart
attacks, strokes, pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis, and
blood clots in women. Distributed
by Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals, there are currently more
than 9,000 pending lawsuits
against these brands of pills.
I could not believe that the best
birth control left in Iran — an Iran
whose pharmaceutical market has
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08.18.13
been decimated by sanctions —
were the same pills facing court
action and considered a serious
health threat in the United States.
I visited several pharmacies that
same day, and received the same
answer from one beleaguered
pharmacist after another, all of
whom had grown tired of telling
their customers they no longer
had the medicine they needed.
The best birth control
left in Iran... were the same
pills facing court action and
considered a serious health
threat in the United States.”
For years, there has been a
plethora of birth control pills and
other contraceptives easily available and extremely affordable in
Iran, a country that boasts one of
the most successful family planning programs in the world. It is
only in the aftermath of cumulative, American-led sanctions
against Iran’s banking and financial sectors that m