(Radio Iowa) – Cancer patients in Iowa are facing delays in potentially-life-saving treatments as two important drugs used in chemotherapy are in very short supply. Dr. Richard Deming (DEM-ing), medical director of the MercyOne Cancer Center in Des Moines, says almost 50-percent of the cisplatin and carboplatin used in the U-S were made by a single factory in India — which recently stopped making those drugs. While those key drugs are being made elsewhere, there’s now such a tight supply and high demand for them that chemotherapy treatments are having to be pushed back.

Deming says nine in ten cancer treatment centers nationwide are being forced to delay treatments. A delay of even one week can cause “intense psychosocial distress” for patients and their families, Deming says. If the delay goes into months, he says there’s the possibility the delay in treatment may impact the overall ability to cure someone of a curable cancer.