The US has had a shortage of saline solution since 2013.

[ralphc1]

There’s a national shortage of saline solution. Yeah, we’re talking salt water. Huh?

Normal saline is also a medical treatment of beautiful and inexpensive simplicity. It’s sodium chloride. That’s salt water for you folks who slept through sixth grade chemistry. Bags of the fluid cost about a buck, says Erin Fox, Director of the University of Utah’s Drug Information Service.

Given its basic composition and the steady demand, you may assume that America—poised as it is to embark on an era of “precision medicine”—would have a robust and ready supply of normal saline (and let us repeat: that’s salt water). In fact, the fluid has been on the Food and Drug Administration’s drug shortage list since late 2013. The agency has worked to shore up supply since then by importing saline solution from Norway, Spain and Germany.

http://fortune.com/2015/02/05/theres-a-national-shortage-of-saline/

I heard about this in relation to the flu season. How in the world can we have such a shortage of a simple substance that has gone on for so long? The places that make it are operating at full capacity and have been since the 2013 flu outbreak. As the flu season seems to be underway, it might require a lot more. Why hasn't somebody expanded production or built more facilities. I assume it's distilled water and salt that would be distilled to sterilize it. It would be crazy if people died from the flu due to lack of salt water. Then again it would probably be the people who didn't get the flu shot so it would be natural selection.

 

[Horse Style]

I've been in the hospital for the last 2 weeks. I have to see any shortage for saline solution here with the amount of times they have to flush my IV

 

[ralphc1]

I've been in the hospital for the last 2 weeks. I have to see any shortage for saline solution here with the amount of times they have to flush my IV

For the time being, The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists which issued guidance in March 2014, advises clinicians, among other things, to conserve IV solution by “using oral hydration whenever possible” and to “consider flushing central venous access devices 1-3 times per week rather than daily.” Nurses and physicians talk about having to improvise with what they’ve got—smaller bags, or alternative fluids. Pharmacists talk about bartering medical supplies among one another, and spending an unprecedented number of hours tracking down supply and scrambling together substitutes. The Veterans Health Administration, the largest healthcare system in the country, told Fortune it considers the normal saline shortage a “serious concern” that has led it to implement operational changes in order to manage care with a limited supply.

I suspect it's just another way to raise prices.

Interestingly, amid this scarcity, there’s a small, but burgeoning business in providing IV therapy for people suffering from a, perhaps, less deadly ailment: hangovers. Companies like the Las Vegas-based Hangover Heaven and New York-based Hangover Club make house calls, or provide services from mobile units—usually a bus. Customers suffering from a long night out are hooked up to IV drips that contain saline solution and often a vitamin cocktail. (Some of those cocktails make the drug shortage list, too.)

Hangover Club founder Asa Kitfield says the saline shortfall has made business a little tougher in terms of finding the sterile salt water, but not impossible. “There’s definitely excess supply. You just have to pay extra for it.”

 

[Pittie Petey]

So the French have found a way to monetize their tears of surrender?

 

[drstrangelov]

There’s a national shortage of saline solution. Yeah, we’re talking salt water. Huh?



http://fortune.com/2015/02/05/theres-a-national-shortage-of-saline/

I heard about this in relation to the flu season. How in the world can we have such a shortage of a simple substance that has gone on for so long? The places that make it are operating at full capacity and have been since the 2013 flu outbreak. As the flu season seems to be underway, it might require a lot more. Why hasn't somebody expanded production or built more facilities. I assume it's distilled water and salt that would be distilled to sterilize it. It would be crazy if people died from the flu due to lack of salt water. Then again it would probably be the people who didn't get the flu shot so it would be natural selection.

I don't think the shortage is as problematic as you're envisioning it. Nobody is being denied saline for rationing purposes or anything like that. You've just got a massive constant demand. In terms of increased production, the article you linked says that exactly what's happening, but it's being done by the existing manufacturers. This would be a very hard market to break into.

 

[ralphc1]

I don't think the shortage is as problematic as you're envisioning it. Nobody is being denied saline for rationing purposes or anything like that. You've just got a massive constant demand. In terms of increased production, the article you linked says that exactly what's happening, but it's being done by the existing manufacturers. This would be a very hard market to break into.

Even so, Baxter has invested in additional manufacturing capacity; it will come online later this year, though Deborah Spak, the company’s Global Communications Director says “it is difficult to estimate how much it will benefit supply.”

The whole supply and demand cycle becomes a reason to raise prices. Manufacturers are possibly pushing for a relaxation of regulations put in place after contaminated solution was found.

Cathy Denning, a senior vice president of sourcing at Novation, a Texas-based GPO—a contracting organization that operates as a middleman between drug wholesalers and healthcare providers—says it’s the demands of the production process, not from the market, that have actually led to the saline shortage. She says the problem began two or so years ago, when the FDA increased scrutiny of IV fluid manufacturers. Particulate matter was found in products, which she says “threw us into this rolling back order situation.”

 

[PG29 red0 Jr]

The amount of red tape for manufacturing and packaging of regulated good such as IV bags must be staggering.