Parliamentary panel targets Iraq’s soaring medicine prices

Shafaq News- Baghdad

Iraq's parliament has formed a temporary committee to investigate medicine prices and curb practices that exploit patients, an Iraqi lawmaker told Shafaq News on Sunday.

Arshad al-Salihi, from the Iraqi Turkmen Front parliamentary bloc, said the committee was established during the parliament's 15th session of its sixth electoral term. The country's Human Rights Committee formed it following growing complaints over the cost of treatment at private pharmacies.

The committee will consider changes to how medicines are prescribed and dispensed, as well as review measures to protect patients, including the use of printed medical prescriptions to make them easier to read and reduce the risk of unclear or deliberately difficult handwriting.

Doctors would also be barred from directing patients to a particular pharmacy to obtain their medicines, al-Salihi said, noting that patients can face difficult circumstances when their need for treatment is exploited.

Lawmaker Haider al-Asadi from the Al-Asas Alliance told Shafaq News that the temporary committee brings together members of parliament's health, integrity and finance committees, stressing that prescriptions should instead be coded and electronically printed.

In January 2026, the Iraqi Pharmacists Syndicate said that medicines are effectively the only commodity subject to a centralized official pricing system, with import and production costs feeding into the final retail price. It has previously warned, however, that changes in import costs, distribution practices, and weak enforcement can quickly produce price differences at pharmacy counters.

Read more: Iraq’s Pharmaceutical Crisis: shortages, counterfeit drugs, and ineffective reforms