Iran Press/ America: Julie Gralow, chief medical officer of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, said on Thursday that 100,000 patients are affected by the shortages.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said last week that over 130 medications were in limited supply, 14 of which were cancer therapies.
A variety of circumstances, according to experts, have led to the shortages, which have this time notably impacted two front-line medicines - carboplatin and cisplatin - used to treat a variety of malignancies, including head and neck, gynecologic, and gastrointestinal cancers.
The most recent shortfall resulted from the closure of an Indian company that provided cisplatin ingredients to all US producers owing to quality issues. According to Dr. Gralow, this increased demand for carboplatin, a replacement medicine.
Some providers have been compelled to lengthen the time between patients' chemotherapy sessions, and other patients have had to drive several hours to multiple cancer clinics for treatment.
Karen Knudsen, CEO of the American Cancer Society believes that the cheap cost of generic front-line cancer medications has contributed to periodic chemotherapy drug shortages. While the drugs are inexpensive to produce pharmaceutical corporations are not motivated to do so because they do not generate substantial revenues.
The medicine scarcity problem has also worsened as life expectancy in the United States has grown, which means more people are getting cancer.
The FDA began negotiating with a Chinese producer this week to import one of the chemotherapy medications to help alleviate supply chain constraints, something Knudsen believes will assist in the alleviation of some short-term supply problems in the coming months, but it will do nothing to address a more cyclical problem of chemotherapy medication shortages. "An emergency solution is being put into place, but we are at a moment in time where there needs to be a more durable solution," she stated.
According to medical professionals, the US government should collaborate with the business sector to develop more long-term solutions.
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