Thursday, November 21, 2024

Hurricane Wrecked Facility That Produces 60% US IV Fluids

The shortage may last months as the US expects an increase in hospitalizations due to respiratory virus season.

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Hospitals around the country are conserving critical intravenous fluid supplies to cope with a shortage that may last months. Some hospital administrators say they are changing how they think about IV fluid hydration altogether.

Hurricane Helene, which hit North Carolina in September, wrecked a Baxter International facility that produces 60% of the IV fluids used in the U.S., according to the American Hospital Association.

The company was forced to stop production and is rationing its products. In an update posted Nov. 7, Baxter said its North Cove facility had resumed producing some IV fluids. In an email to KFF Health News, the company wrote that customers will be able to order normal quantities of "certain IV solutions products" by the end of the year, but there is no timeline for when the North Cove facility will be back to prehurricane production levels.

#1 | Posted by Gal_Tuesday at 2024-11-20 09:02 AM

It is almost unbelievable to me that something so essential is only made in a few places. This kind of stuff should have smaller scale manufacturers in every region of the country. Competition is good and if one bad storm can knock out 60% of our production imagine what a war might do.

#2 | Posted by qcp at 2024-11-20 09:31 AM

More on how "the market" makes everything more efficient. You'd think they would learn after the infant formula debacle to spread production out, but noooooooo.
Insanity is doing the same thing over, expecting a different result.
Kinda like the election.

#3 | Posted by morris at 2024-11-20 12:51 PM

Covid f-ed the supply chain.

Fat Donnie ---------- did nothing.

#4 | Posted by LegallyYourDead at 2024-11-20 07:57 PM

It is almost unbelievable to me that something so essential is only made in a few places. This kind of stuff should have smaller scale manufacturers in every region of the country. Competition is good and if one bad storm can knock out 60% of our production imagine what a war might do.

#2 | Posted by qcp

I feel like this is true for a wide variety of medical supplies/drugs.

But, when profit is your primary goal, it's inevitable that extremely limited production facilities will be the norm.

#5 | Posted by jpw at 2024-11-21 10:17 AM

Don't worry, due to the miracle of globalization, we can just reach out to other suppliers across the world that were not impacted and easily import these critical medical supplies from other countries until our supply normalizes...

Oh wait.

#6 | Posted by bartimus at 2024-11-21 12:36 PM

Capitalism is an unmitigated disaster for everything, but it's FAR worse when it's allowed to infect healthcare.

This should never have been able to happen.

#7 | Posted by DarkVader at 2024-11-22 03:47 PM

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