some hospitals and clinics are completely out of the medications and its really frustrating that in this country we have to be scrambling to try and find a drug that technically should be available higher breast cancer risk among black women shows need for earlier screening study however because hes had multiple surgeries in the past due to previous bouts of cancer surgery has more risks for him his wife mindy destefano told abc news last month the american cancer society issued a warning that chemotherapy drugs had returned to the list of the topfive drug classes affected by shortages and warned this could have a devastating effect on patients she continued a lot of our supply comes from india and china and there have been some recent shutdowns of a couple of major suppliers of generic drugs and so it was already sort of a tenuous supply chain that then got disrupted by plant closures were frustrated because not only are we dealing with cancer now we have to deal with a drug shortage of a pretty critical drug destefano told abc news destefano was responding well but then in late may he got a call from his doctor and was told one of the three drugs he was receiving carboplatin was under a global shortage and because of the way the hospital had to prioritize treatments he wouldnt be qualified to receive it anymore she continued as you can imagine its extremely frustrating to know that you have a medication that can potentially cure a patient of cancer or extend their life and to know that you may not have enough to treat that patient just six weeks ago greg destefano began a new chemotherapy combination destefano said this shortage means that unless he chooses a different course of treatment which involves chemotherapy and then a resection or a removal of the tumor he will be ineligible to receive the drug the past six months have been the most challenging in my career for managing drug shortages in the cancer population oral chemotherapy tablet capecitabine april 30 2001 greg woodafp via getty images kennerlyshah said at her center patients have either been switched to alternative medications or there have been operational changes all these drugs that we have shortages in theyre all generic old chemotherapy drugs that are fairly cheap as it relates to cancer drugs dr hanna sanoff a gastrointestinal medical oncologist at the university of north carolinas lineberger comprehensive cancer center told abc news and so the economic margin here is just much smaller for the drug manufacturers i mean it is a life and death drug more new draft guidance drops breast cancer screening age from 50 to 40 for women with average risk destefanos experience is similar to thousands across the united states of patients either having delayed treatment or being unable to receive treatment because of cancer drug shortages among them are carboplatin used to