Ross Day: I don't understand why companies in good conscience can make those kinds of decisions. Ross Day is a former director of Vizient, the country's largest group purchasing organization, or GPO - a health services company that negotiates contracts between hospitals, drug makers and medical suppliers. They could make more money on more profitable drugs- than Vincristine. Ross Day: They indicated that it was a business decision. Months before the shortage, one of the two remaining vincristine manufacturers, Teva Pharmaceuticals, announced it would stop making vincristine for U.S. Unlike newer brand name drugs that cost as much as six figures per dose, vincristine, a low margin "generic" drug around since the 1960s, costs about $5 per dose. Cindy Schwartz: It should be a top value. Cindy Schwartz: One child over another.īill Whitaker: I'm just trying to come up with some explanation for why a drug that is known to save lives is not valued, why it's-ĭr. There's no other alternative, it's just a gut-wrenching feeling of just fear and anger.ĭr. You know? We are fighting every day to keep their spirits up, to change our whole life to make sure that they're getting this treatment. And the hospital is telling me, "We've- we call them every day and they are telling us they don't have it." So, I didn't know what to say.Ĭyndi Valenta: As a cancer mom, we shouldn't be fighting for our children to get a drug that is needed. Because the pharmaceutical company is telling me they have it. Sarah Carney: I honestly didn't even know who to believe.
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When Sarah learned Mikah wouldn't get his treatment, she was on the phone for days calling anyone who might know how to get the life-saving drug: other cancer moms, the hospital, Pfizer, the drug maker. It's a chief ingredient of a chemo cocktail that has an 80% to 90% cure rate. Vincristine, an essential drug for childhood leukemia, was in short supply nationwide. In late 2019, he settled in to his usual chemo chair and got some bad news: the chemo drug vincristine he'd been using for more than two years was suddenly unavailable.īill Whitaker: This was after the doctors had insisted with you that you keep to this schedule.Ĭyndi Valenta: Scared. So if - chemo was supposed to be given on day one and day five, whether that was a holiday or not.we had to take john in to get his infusions.Ĭyndi's 13-year-old son, John, gave up baseball to beat his leukemia.
I didn't realize there was this whole road map, um-this regimen we had to follow.īill Whitaker: They give you a schedule and they tell you you must stick to that schedule.Ĭyndi Valenta: Every function of your life went on this road map. I thought there was one type of chemo that people took when they had cancer. Several times he looked at us and said, "Why is this happening to me? What did I do wrong?"Ĭyndi Valenta: So much is being thrown at you, new- back then I didn't understand. Sarah Carney: Um, he wasn't the same kid. Sarah's son, Mikah, was in pre-kindergarten when he began the painful treatment. Sarah Carney and Cyndi Valenta were facing the same wrenching ordeal at Loma Linda Hospital: both had children undergoing chemotherapy for aggressive leukemia. And because of that smaller margin, you don't have a ton of manufacturers making the product. Antony GobinĪntony Gobin: You would think to yourself, "How hard is it to manufacture some of these simple meds, like dextrose or sterile water?" But, some of these are low-margin drugs. They retrieve leftovers from single dose drug vials to share with other patients and avoid wasting a single drop.Īntony Gobin in meeting: Ask the pharmacist maybe further concentrating to try to conserve some of these 100-ML bags. We are using these syringes for everything.ĭuring a drug shortage, hospitals may be forced to switch patients to less safe or effective alternative drugs. Pharmacist in meeting: Dextrose vials- still completely out of the vials. has weekly drug shortage meetings like this one at Loma Linda. In 2011, when norepinephrine, an old, low profit drug used to treat septic shock, was in short supply, hundreds of people around the country died.
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