Sandego.net – For many Iranians with serious medical conditions, finding treatment has become an exhausting and increasingly unaffordable task. A 35-year-old woman in Tehran, identified as Sima, spent hours searching pharmacies for the medication she needs to prevent kidney failure. She eventually located it at the seventh pharmacy she visited, in an affluent part of the capital, only to discover that its price had risen again.

Unable to absorb the cost, Sima has begun taking less than the prescribed amount of a drug she considers essential to staying alive. Her experience reflects a broader crisis in which shortages, rising prices and damaged insurance payments are pushing patients to delay care, reduce doses or settle for treatments that may not work as well.…