From formula to medicine. Parents of infants and school age kids are being
battered by a wave of shortages. Rogan is back with more on what's
missing on store shelves and how it's impacting families.
To name a few. The baby formula shortage is now in its second year.
Supplies of Children's Tylenol and Motrin are still recovering from
a brutal flu season and the antibiotic amoxicillin is also in short
supply and Adderall. The medication primarily used to treat 80 HD
is increasingly hard to find.
Parents and caregivers are going from store to store calling pharmacy
after pharmacy to find these things that their Children urgently
need for more on what is causing the shortage is we turn to to belly
cars? Ana She's the economy reporter for the 19th, a nonprofit newsroom
that covers gender politics and policy. Stability. Thank you so much
for joining us. Let's start.
With the baby formula shortage. It started about a year ago after
a major recall and a factory closure. So where do things stand now?
At this point, we are seeing supply of formula Start to come back
to shelves. But if you're a parent in most parts of the country,
you're finding that those shelves are still pretty bare. And what
we're seeing is sort of this mix mix match of pockets of the country
where that shortages more acute and other areas where it has come
back significantly injustice. This
Week, We saw some more formula recalled from Enfamil, which the FDA
is saying well, hopefully not worsen the situation significantly,
but it's definitely still a huge problem. There's also the issue
of Children's Tylenol and Motrin. There have been shortages of those
medicines since
At least December of last year. What's the latest with that? And
why is it happening with those? We hear that it's really demand driven
right? We have heard from Johnson and Johnson, who's the main, um,
manufacturer of these medications that this cold flu covid 19 RSV
season from the fall really, really ramped up the demand for these
medications? We had people who were buying them proactively. And
so now we are seeing parents buying alternatives Generic.
Different forms. I think that situation is getting a little better.
But it's still definitely with us as well. And the antibiotic amoxicillin
is also in short supply. That of course, treats bacterial infections,
not viruses. What's behind that? What's happened with amoxicillin
is again we're seeing a demand driven shortage and again, we are
seeing that pediatricians are switching to different antibiotics
to help kids. But what that's causing is a cascade effect. And so
that is really just layering and layering and layering on top of
all of these other shortages that are happening at the same time.
All affecting, really is one of the same group of people right kids
and caregivers. Absolutely. And I want to get to the effect on caregivers
in just a second. But the last individual shortage that we want to
talk about today is Adderall. Are there any similar factors that
go into that shortage?
There are there's a lot of through lines here right with all of these
without a role. It's really interesting because we saw throughout
the pandemic. Some relaxed rules around prescribing a controlled
substance like Adderall. So if you were you seeing a doctor through
Telehealth, you could get out of all through a prescription on telehealth,
which previously you were unable to do and we also have people at
home who were more
Sort of aware of each other Parents were realizing. Wow, you know,
maybe my child has a d h D Let me get this checked out and, of course
supply chain issues, which I should also say is part of this also
happened with Adderall. And so we again have a situation where there's
a many more prescriptions of Adderall. And there's only a set number
of medications that are available each year because it's a controlled
substance. And to Billy Leslie, you've been talking to parents about
how they've been dealing with these things. What are they telling
you? You and
what are some of the things they're doing to deal with it
in their own homes.
I think the tenor of the conversations with parents is really one
of desperation, right? You know, when we talk about formula specifically,
that is an item that has no alternative. This is the only food that
some Children have access to, and so
Really. It's been a lot of desperation. We've seen a lot of parents
helping each other across the country. There's Facebook groups that
have popped up for formula and for other things as well where they're
essentially sending each other these items across the country when
they find them and to total strangers. So these parents are just
kind of cobbling it together, driving to store after store after
store after store, sending family members to drive the stores and
trying to find it, and I should say that there are families that
are able to do that, and there are also low income families for whom
that option is not
Available, so it really is an untenable situation.
And one that just doesn't necessarily seem to be ending anytime soon.