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Saline is just salt and water, right? I would have assumed you can produce it pretty much everywhere if needed. What's stopping other pharma companies from stepping in?
Sterile environment and processes, mostly.
Salt and water are surely relatively cheap (although salt from your kitchen and water from your tap won't do, you need chemically pure salt and distilled water).
You can make makeshift saline by mixing regular salt in distilled water and autoclaving it at 120°C and 1,2 atm for 30 minutes, but this is not hospital-grade.
I used to work in a hospital, but not in healthcare. But I got a bit of an understanding of some of their logistics.
It's not the materials themselves but making sure everything is shelf-stable and sterile.
That's the expensive part. The raw materials are a fraction of the price.
Here's why - how I hate these titles.
Regarding drug supply shortage. There needs to be some redundancy but also some partial autarky. The concentration of manufacturing in India and China is concerning. Yes, this has a cost but it's probably not as much as most people think.
I was very surprised to learn autarky/autarchy is a word. Thanks for expanding my vocabulary!
What an awful article, it doesn't address the alleged manufacturing issues at all other than "Australian government doesn't want to make it locally"
Edit: Well, with a couple clicks through to the Australian government's notice about it, you can find "we cannot compel companies to manufacture in Australia", so it sounds like typical greedy capitalists don't see enough profit in it. I don't see why the Australian government can't decide to publicly fund its own manufacturing operations though. Sounds like an important enough resource that making it locally would be a good idea.
Why are they even telling us this? Saline is one of the easiest IV items to manufacture, it is literally water and salt.
And yes, I am aware it has to be sterile it's still really fucking easy to do this.
Much of the industry has been outsourced to a point even trying to make some of this stuff domestically at volume is impossible, and if it is the price points are wildly off.
Nothing is impossible. It was manufactured locally before and can (and should) be manufactured locally again. There’s no sane reason importing sanitary salt water from China should be cheaper than making it domestically.
Good luck some of the capital required to startup manufacturers like these have a horrible ROI.