Drug Shortages Approach an All-Time High, Leading to Rationing

The New York Times via Yahoo ^ | May 17, 2023 | By Christina Jewett

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Thousands of patients are facing delays in getting treatments for cancer and other life-threatening diseases, with drug shortages in the United States approaching record levels.

Hospitals are scouring shelves for supplies of a drug that reverses lead poisoning and for a sterile fluid needed to stop the heart for bypass surgery. Some antibiotics are still scarce following the winter flu season when doctors and patients frantically chased medicines for ailments like strep throat. Even children’s Tylenol was hard to find.

Hundreds of drugs are on the list of medications in short supply in the United States, as officials grapple with an opaque and sometimes interrupted supply chain, quality and financial issues that are leading to manufacturing shutdowns.

The shortages are so acute that they are commanding the attention of the White House and Congress, which are examining the underlying causes of the faltering generic drug market, which accounts for about 90% of domestic prescriptions.

The Biden administration has assembled a team to find long-term solutions for shoring up the pharmaceutical supply chain, at a time when the United States remains heavily reliant on medicines and drug ingredients from India and China. And in recent weeks, generic drugmakers, supply-chain experts and patient advocates have appeared before lawmakers to discuss the problems.

The scarcity of generic forms of chemotherapy to treat lung, breast, bladder and ovarian cancers has only heightened concerns.

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

huldah1776 :" the drug shortages are all connected to the side effects of the vax and/or covid.
did you know the virus also leaves similar damage.
Spike is spike.
They’ve known since Sars was first [developed]?"

A spike is a spike - exactly !