In December 2022, flu meds for children were hard to come by as a wave of respiratory viruses swept across the country.
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Mario Tama/Getty Images
In December 2022, flu meds for children were hard to come by as a wave of respiratory viruses swept across the country.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
It’s not just your imagination. A Senate report released Wednesday said it’s getting harder to buy medicines like flu meds, common antibiotics and ADHD remedies for children.
Democratic Party Homeland Security and Government Affairs Commission says 30% increase in new drug shortages It will increase from 2021 to 2022, with “devastating consequences” for patients and doctors.
By the end of 2022, 295 medicines were considered in short supply at their peak, impacting treatments for everything from the common cold to cancer.
What is behind these shortages?
Demand for over-the-counter respiratory relief surged as supply chains shrank due to the pandemic, the report said.
But even before the pandemic, the United States was struggling to overcome an inherent shortage of supplies.The report found more than 15 “emergency drugs,” including common antibiotics and injectable sedatives. “Therapeutic drugs” have been in short supply for more than a decade.
Michigan Democratic Senator Gary Peters, who chairs the Homeland Security Committee, said the reliance on foreign manufacturers is the biggest reason the U.S. is struggling to avoid shortages. increase.
“About 80% of manufacturing facilities that produce drug substances […] outside the United States,” he said at a hearing on the matter Wednesday.
It also creates an “unacceptable national security risk,” he says.
The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response told committee staff that 90-95% of injectable drugs used for severe acute care depend on key substances from China and India. In other words, a severe disruption of the supply chain could disrupt the emergency room.
What can be done to solve the medicine shortage?
The report also found that federal and industry regulators’ lack of visibility into the supply chain for such drugs makes it difficult to predict shortages. We do not know the amount of starting material available to manufacturers or, in some cases, the number of manufacturers involved in producing the final drug product.
And even when we have this kind of data, we fail to hold it in a way that helps us predict shortages. According to the report, the data remains “buried in PDF”. To fix this, the FDA could create a central starting material level database to track production.
Commission Democrats also called for teams of federal agencies to pair up to conduct regular supply chain risk assessments, increase data sharing requirements for private manufacturers, and increase data sharing between agencies and industry partners. is recommended.
According to the report, increasing federal investment in drug manufacturing would also help draw U.S. drug supplies away from foreign countries. It may mean building academic-private partnerships to
Peters said he plans to propose legislation to implement these long-term recommendations in the near future.
