Objective: In the past decades economic sanctions have been used by different countries 
or international organizations in order to deprive target countries of some transactions. 
While the sanctions do not target health care systems or public health structures, they 
may, in fact, affect the availability of health care in target countries. In this study, we used 
media analysis to assess the impacts of recent sanctions imposed by the Central Bank of 
Iran in 2012 on access to medicines in Iran.
Methods: We searched different sources of written news media including a database of 
nonspecialized weeklies and magazines, online news sources, web pages of daily newspapers 
and healthcare oriented weeklies from 2011 to 2013. We searched the sources using the 
general term “medicine” to reduce the chances of missing relevant items. The identified news 
media were read, and categorized under three groups of items announcing “shortage of 
medicines,” “medicines related issues” and “no shortage.” We conducted trend analyzes to 
see whether the news media related to access to medicines were affected by the economic 
sanctions.
Findings: A total number of 371 relevant news media were collected. The number of news 
media related to medicines substantially increased in the study period: 30 (8%), 161 (43%) 
and 180 (49%) were published in 2011, 2012 and 2013, respectively. While 145 (39%) of 
media items referred to the shortage of medicines, 97 (26%) reported no shortage or 
alleviating of concerns.
Conclusion: Media analysis suggests a clear increase in the number of news media reporting 
a shortage in Iran after the sanctions. In 2013, there were accompanying increases in the 
number of news media reporting alleviation of the shortages of medicines. Our analysis 
provides evidence of negative effects of the sanctions on access to medicines in Iran.