Policies of the Governments of Iran to Solve Drug Crisis (1941-1953)

Drug is important in the treatment of epidemics and governments knew it .Hence, any government, in order to supply the drugs, according to its political and economic conditions, would adopt certain policies. The specific political, economic, and social conditions of the period between 1941 to 1953, such as the initiation of the World War II and the military occupation of Iran, lack of health infrastructure and the prevalence of epidemics, short-lived governments, shortages of the health budgets, and the economic crisis in the year 1952 pinpoint the importance of the pharmacological measures to be taken by the government authorities of that time. Given this importance, so far, no research has been done in this regard. The present paper attempts to rely on the available publications and employs an analytical method to answer the following questions: What policies did the then governments implement against the inflation, shortages, hoard, and counterfeit drugs? And to what extent did they succeed in overcoming these difficulties? The results obtained in this study indicated that the governments, to solve the crisis of drugs, took the following measures: establishment of the Pharmaceutical Department and the Department for preventing Hoard Medicines, establishment of pharmaceutical institutions, abolition of the drug monopoly and customs duties of peculiar drugs, monitoring the import and production of peculiar drugs, and the expansion of Razi institution and Pasteur Institute of Iran. These measures which were accompanied with the enactment of some laws and exercising severe punishments could not solve the drug problems in the long run and they were only of an instantaneous effect.