Voices
macist told me that when it comes
to such medicines specifically for
women, most are no longer available. One pharmacist put the situation in perspective like this: “Two
months ago, we didn’t even have
access to foreign birth control — at
least we do now, even if it’s Yaz or
Yasmin. But go searching in all of
Iran, and you won’t find any vaginal
creams or vaginal antibiotics. And
for women who are undergoing IVF
treatment, they have to search high
and low to buy their medicines on
the black market.”
What all this means is that
women suffering from yeast infections, urinary tract infections,
and other vaginal infections have
no recourse to modern medical
treatment for extremely common,
painful maladies.
Some have suggested that Iran’s
birth control shortages may also
be due to the Ahmadinejad government’s push to reverse the
country’s family planning program
in a bid to boost the national birth
rate and increase family size (today, Iran has a population growth
rate of 1.2 percent and a fertility
rate of 1.6). I posed this specific
question to pharmacists and manufacturers, who are working at the
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frontline of shortages.
They agreed that mismanagement and internal conflict over
public health policy play a role in
medicine shortages, but on the
issue of birth control, they didn’t
think it was the government’s doing. Foreign brands of birth control went missing for five months
at precisely the same time that
other foreign medicine became
If decreased access
to good birth control pills
was government policy to
increase the birth rate, then
where were the necessary
injections for IVF treatment?”
hard to find in the country. Nearly
three months ago, Yaz and Yasmin
returned to the market, but other
foreign brands that used to be
widely available did not.
Throughout this, however, Iranian-made birth control pills have
remained on the market. Some
raised the issue of IVF treatments, arguing that if decreased
access to good birth control pills
was government policy to increase
the birth rate, then where were