{"id":47962,"date":"2026-04-02T07:20:35","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T07:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/47962\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T07:20:35","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T07:20:35","slug":"how-the-iran-war-is-disrupting-the-worlds-medicine-supplies-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/47962\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Iran war is disrupting the world\u2019s medicine supplies"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is an excerpt of an article originally published by Healthbeat<\/a>, a nonprofit newsroom covering public health published by Civic News Company<\/a> and KFF Health News<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The world\u2019s conflicts rarely stay confined to the map. <\/p>\n

The Iran war is scrambling medical supply chains globally, because the Persian Gulf is not just an energy chokepoint but a critical transit hub for pharmaceuticals.<\/p>\n

The Iran war is a drug shipping fiasco<\/p>\n

The starkest warning yet of how the Iran war could scramble global health comes from this must-read analysis in Think Global Health<\/a>. The short version: The war is choking the movement of medicines around the world.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that Persian Gulf countries (like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates) are major drug producers. They\u2019re not.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s that these countries form \u201ca critical pharmaceutical transit hub,\u201d where drugs and their basic ingredients from India, Europe, and China routinely pass before heading to Africa, Asia, and the United States.<\/p>\n

For reference, this is a region whose pharmaceutical industry is worth $23.7 billion. But roughly 80% of that trade depends on medicines or pharmaceutical ingredients passing through.<\/p>\n

And right now both ways these medicines largely transit, the sea-shipping lane in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf\u2019s giant cargo airports, are badly disrupted. Shipping has dropped \u201c90% below pre-war levels,\u201d while air cargo capacity has fallen by \u201c79% in the Gulf region.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"New Orleans pharmacist Ruston Henry said, his family\u2019s H&W Drug Stores haven\u2019t yet experienced any changes in pharmaceuticals or vaccines from wholesalers. (Photo by Gus Bennett \/ Th eLens)<\/p>\n

In New Orleans, pharmacist Ruston Henry from H&W Drug Store, the independent three-store New Orleans pharmacy, still remembers the pandemic delays. \u201cDuring COVID, everything was slow,\u201d he said. But to date, he said, his family\u2019s pharmacies haven\u2019t yet experienced any Iran War changes in pharmaceuticals or vaccines from the wholesalers who supply his family business.<\/p>\n

Where will the shocks be felt first?<\/p>\n

Delayed medicine; shortages of helium needed for MRIs<\/p>\n

Healthbeat reached out to ask one of the authors, Prashant Yadav at the Council on Foreign Relations, who is a leading expert on global health care supply chains.<\/p>\n

Right now the biggest risk is cold-chain medicines, which Yadav writes are \u201cvaccines, insulin, biologics, and cancer therapies\u201d with \u201cshort shelf lives\u201d that have to move quickly and stay within a tight temperature range; largely \u201cbetween 2\u00b0C and 8\u00b0C,\u201d which is 35-46\u00b0F.<\/p>\n

Most cold-chain medicines move by air cargo, Yadav told Healthbeat, and airlines cannot simply add new capacity overnight if those routes stay disrupted. Even over the medium term, \u201cI don\u2019t think European airlines, or the two major African ones that have stepped in, will enhance their cargo carrying capacity by buying new planes just because this may continue for a few more months,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When shipments of these drugs are held up, those medicines can spoil. And even when they don\u2019t, delays multiply. As the article notes, cargo carriers \u201cneed a week and a half to catch up for every week that air shipments are suspended.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also at risk are supplies of helium, a gas that is \u201can essential input for cooling the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines used worldwide for [over 95 million] medical scans,\u201d each year. Qatar alone produces a third of the world\u2019s helium. And the threat is not just constraints from the transit fiasco, but physical damage to the industry, including Iran\u2019s March 18 attack on a major helium production site in Qatar.<\/p>\n

Yadav believes we will ultimately see some \u201csupply impact for MRI helium,\u201d but exactly how severe it may become is too hard to untangle right now. Much will depend on how long Qatar\u2019s production remains offline and how exactly limited supplies are allocated between industries, like semiconductor manufacturing (which is an enormous use for the gas).<\/p>\n

Threatened medical research, increased drug costs<\/p>\n

Perhaps unexpectedly, the war has also put medical research under threat. Yadav\u2019s article describes how the Gulf region was in the middle of a clinical trial boom, driven by \u201cthe area\u2019s high chronic-disease prevalence and its lenient regulations allowing for fast-tracked trials,\u201d and that supply chain chaos could interrupt ongoing trials.<\/p>\n

The good news is that, for now, \u201cshort-term risks of drug shortages are low in most countries,\u201d Yadav writes. But that\u2019s because of \u201cinventory buffers\u201d that governments and pharmaceutical companies keep around the world. But those cushions are temporary. If shipping and air freight disruptions drag on, shortages will eventually work their way through the system.<\/p>\n

Could the war could trigger a price squeeze for medicines made with petroleum products, which is more than you might think? \u201cMost of our medicines have some kind of a chemical precursor, and a very significant portion of those chemical precursors are petrochemical derivatives,\u201d Yadav told Healthbeat. (For example, acetaminophen and ibuprofen are made using an oil-based chemical called propylene.)<\/p>\n

Our reporting has more urgency than ever.<\/p>\n

Sign up to get the latest news on New Orleans and the Gulf South sent directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n

But Yadav says, for now, that\u2019s not a major concern. The petrochemical ingredients in something like a pill of ibuprofen only make up only around 5% of the cost, with the rest tied up in processing and manufacturing.<\/p>\n

But other cost implications are coming fast.<\/p>\n

A combination of rerouted flights, rising air-cargo rates, and surging insurance premiums for ships mean that moving medicines are more expensive everywhere. And at least one supply chain logistics firm says that, \u201cconsumers could see drug costs affected within four to six weeks<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"William Herkeqitz (Photo by Laura Mulkerne \/ HEALTHBEAT)<\/p>\n

Yadav\u2019s article ends with a clear policy warning. Governments may need to temporarily loosen certain import regulations so medicines can move through alternate routes. Longer term, he says the world needs something bigger: a standing G20 coordination system that tracks where medicines are stuck and helps countries respond before shortages hit.<\/p>\n

William Herkewitz<\/a> is a reporter based in Nairobi, covering global public health for Healthbeat<\/a>, a nonprofit newsroom covering public health published by Civic News Company<\/a> and KFF Health News<\/a> Every week, in the Global Health Checkup,<\/a> Herkewitz highlights some of the week\u2019s most important stories on outbreaks, medicine, science, and survival from around the world. Contact William at wherkewitz@healthbeat.org. Sign up for Healthbeat newsletters here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is an excerpt of an article originally published by Healthbeat, a nonprofit newsroom covering public health published…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47963,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[19345,19346,19347,19348,19349,196,19350,39,5226,19351],"class_list":{"0":"post-47962","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-persian-gulf","8":"tag-cold-chain-medicine","9":"tag-drug-shortages","10":"tag-global-health-crisis","11":"tag-global-logistics-crisis","12":"tag-healthcare-disruption","13":"tag-iran-war","14":"tag-mri-helium-shortage","15":"tag-persian-gulf","16":"tag-persian-gulf-shipping","17":"tag-pharmaceutical-supply-chain"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116333905566210067","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}