Great Satan US-led sanctions kill Iranian teenager

A hemophiliac Iranian teenager living in southwestern Iran has reportedly lost his life at the hospital due to the shortage of required medication caused by the US-led sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

The 15-year-old, identified as Manouchehr, who lived as part of the nomadic tribes close to the Dezful county, located in Iran’s Khuzestan province, was sent to the hospital after an incident, but died as it was too late for him to be saved, the head of the Iranian Hemophilia Society, Ahmad Ghavidel has said.

Hemophilia is a group of hereditary genetic disorders, which adversely affect the body’s ability to control blood clotting or coagulation, necessitating medication.

Ghavidel has expressed regret over the human loss, blaming Europe and the US sanctions against Iran for the shortage of medicine. “Currently, the storages of medicine for hemophiliac patients are [either] depleting or have depleted in a large number of cases,” he has said.

“The Iranian Hemophilia Society is of the opinion that the US and the European Union have hidden behind a useless ratification, according to which medicine and food are not in the list of the items subjected to sanctions.”

The illegal US-engineered sanctions were imposed based on the unfounded accusation that Iran is pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.

Iran rejects the allegations, arguing that as a committed signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

In addition, the IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities but has never found any evidence showing that Iran’s nuclear energy program has been diverted towards military objectives.

Earlier in the month, the head of Iran Medical Council criticized the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for his silence over the US-led restrictions on the sales of medicine to the Islamic Republic.

In a letter to the UN chief, Shahaboddin Sadr described as “inhuman,” the US-engineered restrictions, applied by Western and European countries to the sales of medication and medical equipment to Iran.

On September 4, The Washington Post published an article titled In Iran, Sanctions Take Toll On The Sick, which detailed how drug shortages are particularly affecting “cancer patients and those being treated for complex disorders such as hemophilia, multiple sclerosis, and Thalassemia, as well as transplant and kidney dialysis patients.”

Fatemeh Hashemi, the head of Iran’s Charity Institute for Special Diseases, has voiced grave concern for the six million patients suffering from special diseases and their families, who are desperately wrestling with related problems.

Pundits have called for the trial of the US President Barack Obama for the imposition of the illegal restrictions and killing of Iranian children.