Dr. Jacalyn Duffin, a hematologist and medical historian at Queen’s University in Kingston, first became aware that certain drugs were sometimes getting hard to find in 2010, when her patient at a cancer clinic wanted to stop chemotherapy because she couldn’t get prochlorperazine, a common anti-nausea drug.
Duffin was shocked. “I just couldn’t believe that it was gone. It is a very old, reliable drug that has been around for a long time and it was the only one that worked for her.”
Duffin started investigating and quickly discovered the problem went far beyond an old anti-nausea drug. Read more in CMAJ.