Faced with foreign exchange crunch, Pakistan looks up to Iran for life-saving drugs

Islamabad: Banking on what Pakistan described as “longstanding and time-tested close fraternal relations” with Iran, cash-strapped Pakistan is looking forward to Tehran's help to tide over the unprecedented medicine shortage, including that of life-saving drugs.

For more than six months now, Pakistan has faced a severe shortage of life-saving drugs amid a crippled healthcare system due to a lack of Forex reserves, which in turn, has hampered the country’s capacity to import both the medicines and the raw material used for local drug manufacturing.

It was decided at a meeting between Pakistan’s Minister for National Health Services (NHS) Dr Nadeem Jan and Iranian Ambassador to Pakistan Reza Amiri-Moghaddam here on Tuesday that Pakistan’s drug regulatory authority will work out a comprehensive strategy on a fast-track basis with its Iranian counterpart to ensure uninterrupted supply of life-saving drugs.

Pakistan’s leading daily Dawn reported that the Iranian Ambassador had called on the Pakistani Minister when the two sides “discussed diverse areas of cooperation in the field of health between the two countries.”

“Pakistan and Iran share longstanding and time-tested close fraternal relations,” the report quoted Dr Jan as saying about the meeting, during which the Minister also said, “Iran has a strong primary healthcare system. Pakistan will definitely benefit from the experiences and best practices adopted by Iran in the field of primary healthcare.”

Quoting the data released by the central bank, a report in The Express Tribune newspaper in mid-August said that foreign exchange reserves held by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) had increased by 0.14 per cent on a week-on-week basis, reaching USD 8.1 billion. In the first week of June, the foreign exchange reserve had plummeted to below USD 4 billion.