Official: Iran Producing Liquid Helium, N. Medicine
TEHRAN (Basirat): A senior Iranian health ministry official said that the country has gained self-sufficiency in manufacturing different drugs, including the production of liquid helium and various types of nuclear medicine.
"Today, we produce liquid helium from liquid gas to be used for patients who need MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging)," Director-General of Research and Technology Development Office of the Ministry of Health and Medical Education Hossein Vatanpour said on Saturday.
"We also produce many nuclear medicine and biotech drugs," he added.
Iran has taken long strides in producing different types of drugs and medical equipment.
Deputy Health Minister for Research and Technology Reza Malekzadeh announced last June that Iranian scientists had produced 22 biological medicine, adding that 97% of the country's needed drugs are manufactured domestically.
"Our scientists have succeeded in the production of 22 biological drugs," Malekzadeh said.
"Also, the capable pharmacists of our country have been able to produce 97% of the medicine needed by the patients inside the country," he added.
Malekzadeh also underlined that cooperation between the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) and the pharmaceutical industry has led the country to approximate independency in the production of different types of radio medicine.
Also, the father of Iran's nuclear medicine underlined in February the country's high capabilities in nuclear medicine, and announced production of the most common drug for cancer treatment by Iran.
"Technetium is a radio medicine which is taken from molybdenum and is the drug with the highest consumption at the world's nuclear medicine centers," Dr. Mohsen Saqari, a Tehran University professor, told FNA.
He added that Iran was able to produce Technetium.
"Iran now exports technetium generator (or colloquially a technetium cow or moly cow, a device used to extract the metastable isotope 99mTc of technetium from a source of decaying molybdenum-99) to many countries and if we can produce molybdenum, we will become fully self-sufficient in this area and of course, today we have had many successes in radio medicine production technology," Saqari said.
Source:FarsNews
