Elena Johnston is a cancer patient getting chemotherapy infusions. In the middle of treatments, her treatment center ran out of carboplatin, then they put her on cisplatin.

Two drugs for cancer patients are in short supply and that shortage could delay when patients can get life saving treatments. Two drugs cisplatin and carboplatin used to be as widely available as aspirin but now 70% to 90% of doctors in the country, that treat cancer, have reported difficulty getting the drugs for their patients.

Cancer patients and oncologists are dealing with an alarming shortage of critical chemotherapy drugs. Specifically, oncologists have short supplies of platinum-based generic drugs called cisplatin and carboplatin used to treat lung, breast, bladder, ovarian, endometrial and head and neck cancers.