The Director-General of the specialized and super-specialized services office of Iran’s Health Insurance Organization said that since the beginning of the year, several times price increases for medicines have been carried out.

Maryam Azadi said that all of these cases are announced by the secretariat of the Supreme Council of Health Insurance to the basic insurance entities, and the latest increase was also implemented in the Health Insurance systems in recent days.

Her remarks are made while Seyed Mohammad Jamaliyan, a member of the Health Commission of the Parliament of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, said on Monday that some pharmacies can no longer afford to procure medicines.

Ahmad Ariyannejad, another member of the same commission, said that a number of patients have delayed or abandoned their treatment because of the high cost of medicines.