Hurricane Helene is gone but its ripple effects continue all across the U.S., with tens of thousands of dialysis patients now at risk of losing access to life-saving care due to a shocked supply chain.
Hospitals warned that when Baxter International’s North Carolina facility was shut down by Helene, the U.S. health system would acutely feel the impact. These harms are now becoming evident nearly three weeks after the storm.
Baxter’s North Cove manufacturing plant supplied roughly 60 percent of IV fluids used by U.S. hospitals, including half of all peritoneal dialysis (PD) fluids for the country; the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declared PD fluids in shortage last week.
PD is used to treat kidney failure, when a patient’s kidney can no longer effectively filter their blood. There are two types of dialysis, peritoneal and hemodialysis, with the former able to be done at home, while the latter is usually done at a dialysis center.
Hemodialysis involves blood being removed from a patient’s body and filtered through a hemodialysis machine, essentially operating as an external, artificial kidney. PD involves a patient filling their abdomen daily with a cleansing fluid called dialysate, keeping it in their body for about four to six hours, draining it and then replacing it with fresh dialysate.
In the absence of dialysis or a kidney transplant, a patient with kidney failure is certain to die.
For most patients, access is relatively easy when supply is normal. Dialysis is federally covered, regardless of age, and the vast majority of dialysis........