Just when you think Biden’s America can’t get any worse.
Jeff Bolle, a 60-year-old high school counselor and football coach from Milwaukee, lost his battle with bile duct cancer after his chemotherapy treatment was halted due to a critical shortage of the drug cisplatin, The Daily Mail reported.
His death was not just a loss to those who knew him but also a stark example of the dire consequences of the ongoing drug shortage crisis in the United States.
Jeff Bolle, a dedicated coach and educator, had been battling a grapefruit-sized tumor located near his liver, diagnosed in October 2022. Despite undergoing surgery and four rounds of chemotherapy, Bolle needed additional treatments to eliminate the remaining cancer cells. However, his treatment was cut short when his healthcare providers ran out of cisplatin, the chemotherapy drug critical to his treatment plan.
The shortage of cisplatin is part of a broader national crisis affecting a wide range of essential medications, including drugs for diabetes, infections, and other cancers.
A recent survey revealed alarming statistics: 72% of the nation’s 29 largest cancer centers reported a shortage of carboplatin, and 59% noted a cisplatin shortage. These shortages are severely impacting patient care, with hundreds of thousands of individuals unable to receive necessary treatments.
U.S. drug shortages have reached a peak with 323 medicines in short supply, marking the highest level since the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists started monitoring in 2001, according to Axios.
“During the first quarter of 2024, ASHP and our partner, the University of Utah Drug Information Service, tracked 323 active shortages. This is an all-time high, surpassing the previous record of 320 shortages in 2014,” the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) said in a statement.
“All drug classes are vulnerable to shortages. Some of the most worrying shortages involve generic sterile injectable medications, including cancer chemotherapy drugs and emergency medications stored in hospital crash carts and procedural areas. Ongoing national shortages of therapies for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder also remain a serious challenge for clinicians and patients,” it added.
Daily Mail reported:
After platinum is mined, it is turned into cisplatin in India at Intas Pharmaceuticals, before it is filled and finished at FDA-approved sites in Europe and the US. It is in these stages of development that the sticking points resulting in shortages occurred.
Intas Pharmaceuticals has run into problems with the FDA over the years and was shuttered after a surprise inspection of one of its sprawling plants last year uncovered quality control issues.
Staff were also found to have thrown acid on key documents in an effort to obscure them from regulators. The manufacturing shutdown set off a supply shock in February.
The FDA has resorted to opening import channels with China to bring in the crucial drugs, a temporary fix.
Supplies of other drugs have been affected by similar supply chain issues, as well as natural disasters.
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