WEDNESDAY, Oct. 16, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Following hurricane damage that shuttered a North Carolina plant that makes 60% of the country’s IV fluids, U.S. health officials have invoked the Defense Production Act to hasten rebuilding of the factory.

A nationwide shortage of IV fluids has only worsened since Hurricane Helene wrecked the plant run by Baxter International Inc. late last month, and hospitals say they are still postponing surgeries and procedures due to short supply.

“Ensuring people have medical supplies they need is a top priority of the [Biden] Administration. It’s exactly why we are working closely with Baxter to support cleanup and restoration of the facility, including invoking the Defense Production Act to help production resume as quickly as possible,” an official with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told CBS News on Tuesday. Last week, the agency detailed its plans to help reopen the factory.

While the North Carolina factory remains closed, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has allowed Baxter to import IV fluids from its other plants around the world. Officials say they are also backing plans to airlift more supplies into the United States.

In recent weeks, U.S. health officials have urged all hospitals to conserve IV fluids, even if they are not facing a supply crunch. Some major health systems have told CBS News that they had avoided a shortfall, but were still carefully managing IV supplies.

Meanwhile, the Veterans Health Administration, which operates the country’s largest integrated health system, said it is monitoring the situation.

“VA is closely tracking inventory, shipments, cross-leveling supply between facilities when appropriate, and following general conservation guidance to maximum use of existing supplies,” Veterans Affairs Deputy Assistant Secretary Terrence Hayes said in a statement Tuesday.

This is not the first time the Defense Production Act has been deployed to help manage critical medical supply shortages: It was used by both the Trump and Biden administrations to boost manufacturing of test swabs, ventilators and vaccines during the pandemic.

IV fluids are needed for the care of patients such as premature babies, people on dialysis and frail individuals who rely on IV feeding.

Baxter would not say when it expected its North Carolina plant to become fully operational again, but said it hoped to resume production in phases by the end of the year.

A bridge near the plant is being prioritized for repair so that trucks already loaded with Baxter product can leave and distribute supplies not damaged by the storm, the New York Times reported.

“We will spare no resource — human or financial — to restart operations and help ensure patients and providers have the products they need,” Baxter CEO José Almeida said in an Oct. 9 statement.

Hospitals across the nation need IV fluids to hydrate and feed patients, including those battling a life-threatening blood infection known as sepsis.

“When you’re coming in with sepsis, and specifically the septic shock, those one-liter bags are the most immediate form of treatments, and sometimes you’re getting two, if not three, of them in rapid succession,” Dr. Chris DeRienzo, chief physician executive of the American Hospital Association, explained to the Times. “There are so many special populations impacted by the shortage, what it really leads to is an impact on the whole population.”

IV fluids are also essential to the care of people in dialysis, because patients need specially formulated liquids to help clean their blood once kidneys begin to fail.

The North Carolina plant was a major supplier of such fluids, William Poirier, of the Renal Healthcare Association, told the Times.

The suddenness of the IV fluid crisis highlights ongoing concerns about the fragility of the supply chain of essential medical supplies in the United States. Experts have long noted that the manufacture and distribution of certain items is concentrated in only a few companies.

The pandemic revealed many vulnerabilities, as officials scrambled to find essential supplies of masks, gloves and ventilators. In 2023, tornado damage to a Pfizer plant in North Carolina sparked a frenzied search for new supplies of certain generic drugs.

Most of the products involved in these shortages are low-cost, low-profit items with few incentives for new manufacturers to enter into production, experts explained.

Whether government is doing enough to build capacity is uncertain, Tom Cotter, executive director of Healthcare Ready, a nonprofit founded after Hurricane Katrina, told the Times.

“We haven’t seen a really big uptick in investment in resiliency from the government to harden our supply chains,” Cotter said. “Storms are reaching areas where they’ve never been before with greater severity. There is an increased need to widen the scope of what we think is vulnerable in our medical supply chain.”

More information

Find out more about IV fluids and what they are used for at the Cleveland Clinic.

SOURCES: Statements, Baxter International, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; CBS News; New York Times

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