BOISE, Idaho — Across the country and here in Idaho, some pharmacies are dealing with an Amoxicillin shortage. It’s an antibiotic used commonly to treat bacterial infections. “It's something that really kind of impacted us at a pretty rapid pace,” Tyler Osgood, St. Luke's pediatric pharmacy system coordinator said.
“Amoxicillin is a medication that we will use to treat a community acquired pneumonia, we'll use it to treat a strep throat infection, we can use it for an ear infection,” Tyler Osgood, St. Luke's pediatric pharmacy system coordinator said.
Last month, the Food and Drug Administration placed the medication on its drug shortage list and the need has only increased recently, with more people getting sick.
“It's something that it really kind of impacted us at a pretty rapid pace,” Osgood said.
KTVB reached out to dozens of pharmacies across the Treasure Valley, including pharmacies at Albertsons, Fred Meyer, Walgreens, and Ridleys. All of them say, they are experiencing that shortage, but some pharmacies have not yet run out of the medication, and if they have, they told KTVB, they are substituting it with another prescription or asking doctors to adjust prescriptions in order to treat children.
Walgreens also sent KTVB this statement: "Although demand for Amoxicillin has increased, Walgreens is still able to meet patient needs at this time and will continue to work with our suppliers and distributors throughout the season to best serve our patients."
So, what's behind this shortage?
“There's a multitude of different things that can affect the availability of medications, there can be shortages and raw ingredients that manufacturers are using to produce the drugs. there can be shortages in equipment that's used to support the medications there,” Osgood said.
He adds with heightened RSV cases, more parents are trying to get their hands on Amoxicillin.
“It might be a situation where we're calling around and that's something that we can help when we're prescribing these medications,” Osgood said. “So, we're actually working right now on St. Luke's in tandem with our infectious disease specialists, to come up with all of the alternative therapies that we can use to treat different infectious disease processes that we're seeing in our pediatric population.”
Osgood wants to stress that while there is a shortage, there are alternative therapies out there for treatment. He adds, there are very few instances where amoxicillin is the magic bullet for a particular bacteria.
On Tuesday, some pharmacies also told KTVB, they are seeing a shortage in Adderall, and some stores are also seeing a shortage in medications like children's Tylenol.
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