Drug shortages have been happening more often within the Veterinary Medicine field. 65% of US households or about 79.7 million families own a pet, whether it is a cat, dog, horse, etc. According to the 2015-2016 National Pet Owner Survey, this is up from 56% of US households in 1988 which was the first year the survey was conducted. When there is a drug shortage, many clinics and private practices lose business and patients. Many animals have to be put down due to lack of the medicine they need and the drug will either be replenished or discontinued due to funding and the time it would take to make the drug in order to suffice the demand. Once there is a sudden high demand for a certain drug, the producers have to make more of the product
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The first drug on the list is IV fluids in 3-5 liters’ volume size, mostly used for large animals. It’s on shortage because of an increase in demand and reduction in manufacturing. What had happened in this situation was that there weren’t many large animal vets to begin with in the vet medicine field until recently. Vet schools sort of tried to guide more people into the large animal field and it worked. There are more vet students going into large animal medicine, which causes more medicines needed to be used for patients in need of rehydration and medicine so that caused the increase in demand for IV fluids since it is a commonly used medicine in clinics. Iv fluids may not seem like an important drug but according to the Long Beach Animal Hospital, when dehydrated pets feel ill they can’t fight their disease well, do not eat well, and can’t metabolize drugs efficiently. Dehydration decreases the circulation to two very important organs, the liver and the kidney. These organs are then unable to perform vital functions, some of which include detoxifying drugs and removing waste products so IV fluids are very important in clinics, including large animals. The second drug on the list …show more content…
There are 3 main problems that are common causes of recent drug shortages in the US according to a journal by the FDA. One of the first common issues with shortages are limited production capabilities. Activities related to increasing production usually require a lot of time and planning for manufacturers. They often use the same manufacturing equipment for more than one drug product, so it can be hard to suddenly increase production of products in response to a drug shortage. The additional issue with that is, since manufacturers production line is usually devoted to other productions including the product on shortage, increasing the production of one product would most likely result in a manufacturing delay of another. So, it would be like a never ending cycle of delays and shortages for their company which isn’t good for sales and pets that are in need of that medicine. In order to try and solve this issue, the manufacturers would need to increase production by buying more equipment for its facility, which would allow them to be more efficient in avoiding
The first drug on the list is IV fluids in 3-5 liters’ volume size, mostly used for large animals. It’s on shortage because of an increase in demand and reduction in manufacturing. What had happened in this situation was that there weren’t many large animal vets to begin with in the vet medicine field until recently. Vet schools sort of tried to guide more people into the large animal field and it worked. There are more vet students going into large animal medicine, which causes more medicines needed to be used for patients in need of rehydration and medicine so that caused the increase in demand for IV fluids since it is a commonly used medicine in clinics. Iv fluids may not seem like an important drug but according to the Long Beach Animal Hospital, when dehydrated pets feel ill they can’t fight their disease well, do not eat well, and can’t metabolize drugs efficiently. Dehydration decreases the circulation to two very important organs, the liver and the kidney. These organs are then unable to perform vital functions, some of which include detoxifying drugs and removing waste products so IV fluids are very important in clinics, including large animals. The second drug on the list …show more content…
There are 3 main problems that are common causes of recent drug shortages in the US according to a journal by the FDA. One of the first common issues with shortages are limited production capabilities. Activities related to increasing production usually require a lot of time and planning for manufacturers. They often use the same manufacturing equipment for more than one drug product, so it can be hard to suddenly increase production of products in response to a drug shortage. The additional issue with that is, since manufacturers production line is usually devoted to other productions including the product on shortage, increasing the production of one product would most likely result in a manufacturing delay of another. So, it would be like a never ending cycle of delays and shortages for their company which isn’t good for sales and pets that are in need of that medicine. In order to try and solve this issue, the manufacturers would need to increase production by buying more equipment for its facility, which would allow them to be more efficient in avoiding