Hurricane Healthcare Hell: Helene, Milton Cause US Government to Scramble to Find Hospital IV Fluids

The devastation caused by hurricanes Helene and Milton are significantly impacting the United States healthcare system. Helene knocked out a North Carolina production plant for a major supplier of IV fluids for US hospitals, prompting the federal government to seek help overseas to restore supply.

To compound matters, Hurricane Milton targeted a second IV fluid maker’s facility in Daytona Beach. Together, the Baxter plant in Marion, N.C., and the B. Braun plant in Daytona Beach manufacture approximately 60% and 25% of the nation’s supply of IV fluids. These fluids are necessary for health care providers to treat premature babies, people on dialysis, those who depend on IV feeding, and more.

One patient, Hannah Hale, 37, lives near Dallas and for eight years has required IV feeding with a concentrated dextrose solution, following a Crohn’s disease surgeries which impacted her digestive tract. “They’re not supposed to just drop me like that,” she told the Times, adding that calls to 14 other pharmacies failed to find a new supplier. “I don’t have any recourse,” Hale said.

Suppliers for both Baxter and B. Braun have said they are doing all they can to redirect sources. On Wednesday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said that it was authorizing imports of IV fluid products to the Baxter plants in Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom and China. Owing the hurricane’s wrath, Baxter had been forced to limit supplies to hospitals to 40% of usual following the damage to its plant by Helene, but the company told the Times that deliveries would have already risen to about 60% of usual by Wednesday of this week.

Amid natural disasters like hurricanes, whether the government is doing enough to build capacity is uncertain, according to Tom Cotter, executive director of Healthcare Ready, a nonprofit founded after Hurricane Katrina, who told the Times. “We haven’t seen a really big uptick in investment in resiliency from the government to harden our supply chains. Storms are reaching areas where they’ve never been before with greater severity. There is an increased need to widen the scope of what we think is vulnerable in our medical supply chain.”