The State of Alaska has sent a notification to medical providers that certain IV bags and are going to be in short supply for an unknown period of time, since 60% of the ones used in the United States are made by a factory that was badly disabled by Hurricane Helene.
The message came from Dr. Michael Levy, the State of Alaska’s Emergency Medical Services director. He said that the Baxter International North Cove plant in Marion, North Carolina experienced severe flooding, and that the surrounding area is also badly damaged, including a collapsed bridge on US 221 that leads into the plant. Baxter is the largest IV solutions plant in the United States, producing 1.5 million bags of IV solution a day. The plant is a 1.4 million-square-foot facility employing 2,500 people.
Levy advised medical providers to review their inventory of IV crystalloid and other IV solutions and “consider your agency’s ability to get through a time of reduced supply, should that occur based upon your historic consumption. and the further advised them to consider placing an order earlier than they might think necessary or come up with contingency plans to reduce the use of IV solution bags.
Among the types of medical products Baxter provides are for:
- Renal care: Products for acute and chronic dialysis, including peritoneal dialysis and hemodialysis
- IV solutions: Sterile intravenous (IV) solutions and sets for administering IV fluids and drugs
- Infusion systems: Infusion systems and devices
- Parenteral nutrition: Parenteral nutrition therapies and clinical nutrition products like lipids, amino acids, and vitamins
- Anesthetics: Inhaled anesthetics
- Surgical equipment: Advanced surgical equipment, surgical hemostat and sealant products, and bio surgery products
- Respiratory health: Respiratory health devices
Levy said details are not yet available as to when the problem will be resolved.
The Baxter plant was not only locally flooded but in spite of moving inventory off the floor to the extent possible, the plant was inundated by rushing water after a breach in a nearby dam during Helene. Company employees are also impacted at their homes, many of which were made uninhabitable. Company officials are lining up backup plants for IV products, but in the meantime dialysis and other lifesaving uses of IV bags has now become a nationwide medical crisis as a result of Hurricane Helene.
Alaska and Hawaii are at the end of the supply chain for IV bags.
How strange. A mega business that was flush with cash, vacc!nes and ventilators during the pandemic is now short on supplies for those in actual crisis?
Those who need affordable insulin still struggle, but they can get a free chemical experiment injected into them free of charge…
It is almost as if there is no diabolical agenda that can benefit from this current crisis.
Makes one think about the true motivations of medical establishment.
Anyone ever watch Patch Adams?
The plant got flooded and access is currently difficult, not only for repairs, but also as workers have to cope with damage to their own personal dwellings.
What does this have to do with vaccines, insulin etc.? This is a natural disaster of huge proportions and you put on your tin foil conspiracy hat?
Why we have such limited capacity for manufacturing is a completely different issue and in my opinion a systemic problem.
Taxslave.
I am not going to do the thinking for you if you choose to remain with ignorant. But that is what you choose to do, so be it.
As far as tin foil, get real man. You simpletons always want to call people conspiracy theorists rather than do some critical thinking and pattern recognition of your own.
Too bad I guess. Once a slave always a slave. Good luck in life pal.
You remind me of someone, who in 2005 loudly proclaimed that Hurricane Katrina was all Bush’s fault….which was pathetic to the nth-ed degree back then too.
That you can NOT differentiate between corporate greed on one hand and physical damage by Mother Nature’s current disaster, instead claiming it to be a manufactured crisis, is a YOU problem.
I’d hate to live in your reality……pal!
A Taxpayer.
Suit yourself.
I hope the very best for you.
I agree. The person you’re responding to fails to fully grasp the impact of the article. The fact that megalomanic mergers of like companies (think newspapers, hospital systems, grocery stores, baby formula, pharmaceutical manufacturers, etc) is allowed is entirely different from the urgency of remedy in the aftermath of this horrific hurricane. I am hoping that Japan, as usual, steps up in the brink as well as Germany and Switzerland (Grifols) and that other manufacturing facilities can quickly uptool production of these lifesaving sterile fluids.
Simple things. Simple things in preparedness. Keep an extra supply of toilet paper. Keep enough essential items for at least a couple of weeks (a month is better). Has our Emergency Services system never heard of ‘Emergency?’ No, in our ‘just in time’ delivery system, there is no such thing as preparedness. If the Longshoremen strike happened in Tacoma for a week we would all be back to Sears catalogues. Oops, try using your smart phone.
No redundancy? Hmmm. You’d think in a nation this big that spends billions on healthcare that we would have more than one factory that produces critical, or even common, items. What a great way to destroy some more lives! Watch, there will be a Bill Gates company that will step up to the plate and start manufacturing these needed medical items. Ha.
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