With shortage on children’s medicine, hospitals look for other treatments
Dec 15, 2022, 7:00 PM | Updated: 7:36 pm
FILE: Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City is pictured on Tuesday, March 31, 2020. With a shortage of children's medicine, even experts at Primary Children's Hospital have had to get creative in how they treat sick children. Photo credit: Kristin Murphy/Deseret News.
SALT LAKE CITY — Children’s medicine such as Children’s Tylenol and Tamiflu are hard to find these days because of the high demand for them. As a result, even the medical experts at Primary Children’s Hospital are having to find different ways in order to treat children.
That includes dipping into emergency stocks.
“So, we are actually going into our stockpile and reformulating adult doses that can be used with children,” said Dr. Tamara Sheffield with Intermountain Healthcare.
Sheffield says CDC has told them to prioritize these medications for the children who are the illest.
KSL NewsRadio has heard advice from doctors about not taking adult doses for your own kids. Utah doctors are echoing that same sentiment.
Doctors at Primary Children’s Hospital say it’s better to reach out to neighbors before experimenting with adult Tylenol.
The shortage of children’s medicine comes as a result of a large number of people becoming sick around the country at the same time. The illnesses range from the cold to COVID.
Utah doctors say this is the worst surge of RSV that they’ve seen in more than 10 years.
Mark Jones contributed to this article.
Read more:
- Citing rising RSV cases, Primary Children’s delaying some surgeries
- Primary Children’s Hospital ranked as one of nation’s best children’s hospitals
- Primary Children’s Hospital seeing more pediatric flu cases
