Insulin Supply Chain

I've been wondering recently about the stability of the manufacturing processes that we currently have for insulin. Obviously we have several manufacturers of insulin, but does anybody know about those manufacturers facilities? Does most insulin come from one lab? Is the insulin available on the market produced by a third party and marketed under the pharma company in question?

The thing that got me to thinking about this was (ironically enough) a Wendy's meal I ate the other night. Apparently there was some problem in their supply chain for tomatoes, and so they weren't serving them on sandwiches that night. It got me to thinking that if there was only a handful of manufacturing facilities in the world that produced most of the insulin, that a major fire, natural disaster or terrorist incident could severely hamper our ability to get insulin.

I know for me personally, I only have 1-6 months worth of insulin at any one time. If something really awful ever happened, it is scary to think about where my insulin would come from. :S

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Permalink Reply by HPNpilot on November 21, 2012 at 3:41pm

That is true.

We got a small taste of life without electricity here in NY after the hurricane. We were without power for 11 days. Fortunately , not much damage... many others suffered far worse. We have a generator, but ran out of the propane to power it after 8 days. We couldn't get a refill since the demand was so high, there were not enough delivery trucks.

You probably saw the problems we had with gasoline delivery too, due to damage to the ports and pipelines, and the fact that the gas stations had no power.

After the generator ran out of fuel, we left to go to my in-laws 2.5 hours away , takinbg all my insulin stockpile with me to keep it refrigerated.

All the perishable food in the grocery stores had to be thrown out...and the storm wa sso widespread that most of the stores were closed.

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