PHARMACEUTICALS IN IRAN: AN OVERVIEW

The advent of modern pharmaceutics in Iran roots back to one hundred years ago when Austrian, German, and French pharmacists opened the first modern drugstores in Tehran. Around the same time, European academicians started holding pharmacology lectures in the Polytechnic School in Tehran (Darol- Fonoun). The ratification of the 1920 Medicine Law and also the foundation of a school of pharmacy in Tehran University in 1934, were among the initial steps taken in the 20th century with respect to the modern Iranian pharmaceutical sector. Nevertheless, as late as 1955, Iranʹs link to the worldʹs modern pharmaceutical industry was more or less summarized in the importation of a meager volume of manufactured pharmaceutical dosage forms from Europe and the United States. The first supervising law on the regulations of pharmaceuticals, drinks, foods, and cosmetics was passed in I955. The same year marked the establishment of the first actual pharmaceutical factory in the country.1