FRANKLIN, Va. (WAVY) — Some call it a magic wand. Ozempic, a once a week injectable drug to treat type 2 diabetes, changed Sandra Hayes-Sneads’ life.
“I was feeling better with my diabetes, and my numbers were looking better,” Hayes-Snead told WAVY.
She went from a dangerously high A1C of 14, to a nearly normal A1C of 7- until the magic wand disappeared.
“It’s very frustrating,” said Dr. Dana Stallings, Hayes-Snead’s health care provider. “It’s frustrating for patients, its frustrating for health care providers.”
Stallings’s staff at Southside Diabetes in Franklin fields calls from desperate patients almost daily.
Raveen Chambers is one of them. “Sometimes I can call as many as five to six pharmacies that are within my radius to see if they have it, and often, they don’t,” she said.
Chambers told us she has gone for weeks at a time without her medication, as has Hayes-Snead.
“Being without it, it has caused other medical conditions and things to, you know, happen,” Hayes-Snead said.
Stallings told WAVY, “Diabetes is an incredibly frustrating disease, period. Then when patients finally feel empowered that something they are doing is working, and then its taken away from them, patients become even more frustrated.”
Especially when many believe the medication they need to lower their blood sugar is being used to boost a person’s vanity instead.
“My diabetes is more of a life threatening situation then someone, you know, who might want to shed like five or ten pounds,” Hayes-Snead contended.
Ozempic and Wegovy are basically the same drug — made by the same manufacturer, Novo Nordisk. Wegovy is FDA approved for weight loss, and Ozempic for diabetes.
Stallings states, “Something is definitely wrong because Wegovy has an even more severe back order issue then what Ozempic does.”
She said those who can’t find Wegovy will often get a prescription for Ozempic instead, exacerbating the shortage.
While it infuriates Stallings patients, as a healthcare provider, she also sees the benefits
for treating obesity. Loretta Hardin lost 367 pounds on the medication.
“I have been overweight since I was the age of three,” Hardin said.
Losing that much weight lowers her risk for a laundry list of medical conditions, and Chambers wouldn’t want to take that from her or anyone else who can benefit from such dramatic weight loss, but said, “It’s definitely frustrating. I just feel like its a manufacturer issue.”
10 On Your Side reached out to Novo Nordisk.
In a statement, the Denmark based company said, “In the U.S., we cannot control which specific pharmacies or patients receive Ozempic as we distribute our products to wholesalers who in turn supply retail pharmacies nationwide.”
The statement went on to say “We are expanding our production, which already runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
The company recently announced a $9.5 billion expansion, which includes new production sites.
The statement included no timeline for this expansion, but it can’t come fast enough for those looking for the magic wand to reappear and reliably remain.
“We need it, we certainly need it.” Chambers said.