Trends in Iran Pharmaceutical Market

Population of Iran as a Middle Eastern country with its population growth rate of about 1.3% has passed 80 million in 2016. Iran has a young population and it was reported that in 2013 sixty percent of its population was under the age of 30. However, due to a substantial decrease in population growth rate and increase in life expectancy, Iran will face an aging population in coming decades. With an estimated Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2015 of 393.7 billion USD Iran is the second largest economy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region (1). Country’s economy depends heavily to oil, agriculture and services sectors and government incomes mainly depend to the oil volatile revenues. A noticeable direct or indirect presence of government in different financial sectors including manufacturing and services is a characteristic of Iran current financial sector. Since 1979 Islamic revolution, government of Iran has spent considerable amount of resources on health care services and provided a fairly equitable access for all Iranian to the health care system. As a result in past three decades Iran health sector has achieved considerable success in its goals and this has substantially improved health care system indicators including life expectancy, child-mother mortality rate and access to medicines. Life expectancy of Iranian is substantially above global average and infant mortality have decreased to similar or lower levels to those in countries with comparable income and health spending. In addition to the presence of a country wide primary health care system, secondary and tertiary medical services and high tech medicines are also provided for patients nationwide. However, there are obvious differences between urban and rural access to healthcare services. As a result of interventions, country’s burden of disease has changed from communicable disease to non communicable disease. Despite presences both public and private sectors in Iran health care system consists of, Ministry of Health and Medical Education (MOH) is the main policy maker and stewardship of the health care system. According to the country’s constitutional law, Iran government is responsible for providing the highest attainable level of the health care services for Iran citizens. Therefore currently almost all Iranian have access to one sort of state supported health insurance services and national insurance schemes are responsible for reimbursement of medicine costs. These insurance services cover 70% and 90% of the costs of health care services for outpatients and inpatients, respectively. However, due to lack of sufficient resources in public health sectors and national health insurance schemes, in past years and up to 2012 out of pocket payments (OOP) of patients have substantially increased. The share of OOP in total healthcare expenditure was 52.1% in 2013, well above the 15-20% level which has been suggested as the level above which patients financial protection starts to deteriorate in many countries. Since early 2013 in an attempt to reduce OOP paid by the patients, government of Iran implemented a national health reform program. According to the MOH report, following this reform a 32.8% reduction in OOP spending for inpatient services was attained.