Listen:
Prescription drug shortages reached a five-year peak at the end of last year. Now, a Tampa congress member joined medical professionals at a local hospital Thursday to call for change.
Congress member Kathy Castor laid out the issue at St Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa.
“We’re in a national drug shortage crisis and device shortage crisis. Whether it’s Albuterol, ADHD drugs, certain devices that provide nutrition, cancer patients, we have got to develop stronger supply chains in America.”
Also speaking was Laura Bray for volunteer organization Angels for Change.
“The day I heard in a hospital room that my child wasn’t going to get the medicines she needed to survive, she asked me what that meant. Does that mean she dies? And there was not a single organization out there trying to solve this, felt extremely hopeless.”
Speakers stressed that the issue should be nonpartisan. Castor introduced a bill last month requiring manufacturers of important medical devices to report likely shortages.
However, Bray says that the hard part is where to begin.
“Where we start is a big discussion. So where do you start on a systemic, multilayered crisis? Everybody is going to have a different opinion about that.”
Castor said she wants residents to call on their member of Congress to prevent medical device and prescription drug shortages.
