Due to the shortage of raw materials, plastic is becoming increasingly rare and with it the biological collection tubes.
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The shortage of raw materials affects everyday medical and biological procedures. In Strasbourg, an instruction was passed to the doctors of the hospital : prescribe less blood tests, because deliveries of plastic collection tubes are becoming increasingly rare.
And for explanations, the biology department of the Strasbourg University Hospital does not go overboard. “We are facing a global shortage of plastic. All very frequently used tubes are impacted”details the internal email sent to doctors.“We ask that you limit biology prescriptions as much as possible.“Reduce blood tests? A doctor from the establishment, astonished, confides to us that he does not see himself doing it.
The union of hospital biologists confirms: the supply tensions on these sampling tubes have been recurrent for two years, that is to say since the start of the Covid crisis. But for its president, Carole Poupon, only certain hospitals are affected today, because the tensions only concern certain suppliers.
However, turning urgently to another supplier is not so simple: “We are accredited laboratoriesexplains Carole Poupon. Accreditation is done on the basis of records to use a type of tube. If we change the tube, we would have to redo the files. So, in a crisis situation, there can be tolerance, that’s obvious, but it’s complicated.”
Plastic is not the only component that is regularly missing: stainless steel too, the steel needed to make syringe needles.