The flu season has been worse than normal, as a very strong strain of the virus is spreading through the country. To make matters worse medical officials say hospital workers are scrambling for badly needed IV Bags from factories in Puerto Rico that are still trying to catch up after hurricanes battered the island. Those plants provide much of the U.S. supply of fluid-filled bags used to deliver sterile solutions to sick patients.
Hospital officials are worried that the lack of supplies is going to become a major crisis. Deborah Pasko, the director of medication safety and quality at the American Society of Health System Pharmacists, warns that "if we can't support patients coming in emergency rooms who have the flu, more people are going to die."
Hospital officials and pharmacists are devising alternate plans to deal with the influx of sick patients. Doctors and nurses are coming up with new procedures and options to secure fluids from secondary suppliers. Most hospitals are receiving only a fraction of their orders and many have just a couple of days worth of saline on hand.
Those workarounds and use of secondary suppliers is only a temporary fix. Many of the workarounds, such as using syringes to inject patients instead of using an IV Bag, could lead to shortages of other items that are now being used more often.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration expects the shortage of supplies will begin to ease over the next few weeks as the power grid in Puerto Rico is slowly restored. The last of three Baxter International factories that make saline bags and nutrient solutions went back online before Christmas. However, reports say occasional power outages are still hindering Baxter's ability to get back to full production.