When your life depends on medication that’s on the nationwide shortage list, it amplifies the anxiety of the condition.
Oncologists say it’s now affecting kids with cancer.
Pediatric cancer doctors are sounding the alarm about a short supply, or dwindling supply, of these chemotherapy drugs for children: carboplatin and cisplatin, vinblastine, dacarbazine, and methotrexate.
Oncologists have been forced to make difficult choices about treatments since early February when supplies began to dwindle.
Casey Dixon, a parent from La Porte, said the medications for children’s cancer drugs have already been a problem in the making. She advocates for more and better drugs for pediatric cancer since her son received drugs several years ago that left him with long-term side effects.
“When kids have cancer, they’re not given a smaller dose. They’re given the thing you or I would get as full-grown adults,” said Dixon. “Immediately after he got the diagnosis, the doctors are explaining to you like, here are all the side effects, the chemotherapy that will save your child, hopefully, will also cause horrific side effects up to and including new cancers.”
In recent years, Texans have voted for several billion dollars to go towards cancer. The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas said the most incredible advancements are coming in the form of immunotherapy drugs for kids, a type of treatment that might help eliminate some of those horrible side effects.
“They’ve been successful in some adult cancers and there’s a great deal of attention now being paid to developing these immunotherapeutic approaches for pediatric cancers; cancers where we can harness the body’s immune system to fight the tumor more effectively,” said Dr. Michelle Le Beau, chief scientific officer at The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.
Unfortunately, newer drugs are still in the research phase. So, they won’t rescue us from the current shortage.
In the meantime, the Biden administration announced this month that the supplies for two drugs have almost returned to pre-shortage levels but are still listed as in shortage by the White House.