Diabetes patients hit by glucose monitor shortage

A company that manufactures blood sugar monitoring device and has changed the lives of thousands of diabetic patients has run short of the device due to the excessive demand.

Pharmacy shops in the UK have been unable to provide the customers with the blood sugar monitoring device and say that it might be late by 2-3 weeks. The blood sugar monitoring device is manufactured by Abbott.

It is believed that due to the excessive demand the company has run short of its supplies. The Freestyle Libre Sensor is a device that is used by an estimated 30,000 people alone in the UK. That means that every 1 in 10 people suffer from Type-1 diabetes.

It was first manufactured and given to the NHS patients back in 2017.

Before the launch of this device patients had to prick their fingers numerous times during a day to find out the amount of insulin required and test the blood glucose levels.

Now there are many patients who are questioning about the reliability and quality of supply chain management. There are many patients who are highly concerned about their health.

The sales of the Freestyle Libre Sensor grew in an exponential manner since 2019. Now there are more than 2 million users of the device globally. In 2019, the third quarter results of Abbott showed that the sales of the sensor device made sales of $ 496 million which is an increase by 63.1% since the 2018 third quarter.

The company quickly made use of the high demand of the device in the digital monitoring of diabetes and used to find new and more effective means to manage their health.

But this is not the first time that the company has fallen short of supplies due to high demand. Last year during the same time also the company could not match with the high demand of the sensor device.