Buying BCG vaccine

[luiz]

Hi eveyrone,

My sister is undergoing bladder cancer treatment in Brazil with the BCG vaccine, but she was recently informed that they are experiencing an outage of BCG vaccine and that’s only expected to normalize in May 2020, but since the wait is too long she would have to switch to chemo.

I am trying to buy the vaccine here in Canada and send it to her, but so far I wasn’t able to find anywhere to buy it. Merck says they don’t sell directly to patients and all clinics and hospital I contacted said they can’t place an order for me.

Does anyone know where I can buy the BCG vaccine in Toronto?

Thank you.

[Jack Moon]

BCG is only sold to hospitals and cancer clinics in Canada. There currently is a shortage also in Canada.

I do believe you will have no luck in trying to purchase BCG.

Best regards,

Jack

[luiz]

Thank you Jack,

Indeed I wasn’t able to find anywhere to buy it, I hope the shortage ends soon.

Thank you for the information once again.

[Joe]

Hi Luiz,

I am sorry to hear about the BCG shortage in Brazil is also impacting patients like your sister.   At any rate,  BCG is live bacteria and considered as bio hazard  material so I do not think border customs will allow it  to be brought in and out.  Also, Merck’s BCG is shipped in freeze-dried form in glass vials according to FDA so whatever the method used it has to get there live. That will be challenge.  Having said that I have been following BCG shortage periodically and I became aware of the shortage in Brazil a few month ago.  The article linked below says Brazilians can import BCG from other countries where US or Canada will not allow.  Brazilians have more options than Canadians or Americans.  The article is the cost.  I do not know the cost in Canada, but in US Merck sells a vial of BCG (50mg) for about US$200, so I read somewhere.  In Brazil, each vial costs around 65 Euro but to import TICE strain from Merck or RIVM strain from Germany it will cost 340 Euro but the article says adding up shipping cost and tax will end up 700 Euro per vial.  That is not affordable for general population, but it sounds like technically it is possible to get alternative BCG in Brazil.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/pharmacy/why-brazil-may-have-an-advantage-at-mitigating-bladder-cancer-drug-shortage.html

I also suggest that you chec US side as I am aware that the shortage seems to be impacting more in US than Canada for some reason.  Below is the link on the subject of BCG shortage in BCAN forum.  There you see several patients have been switched from BCG to Gemcitabine due to the BCG shortage and reporting good results.

https://www.inspire.com/search/?group_id=200048&sec=all&query=Bcg+shortage+update&dd_query=

I wish you the best and hope it will work out for your sister in Brazil and all bladder cancer patients in Brazil.

Joe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[luiz]

Thank you so much for these resources Joe.

We tried to import it from Brazil, but costs were indeed prohibitively high (transportation alone was in the 1,000 USD range I believe). The doctors decided to move her into a chemo-base treatment (I am not so sure about the details here).

I wish all the best to those afflicted by this issue and thank you the community for their support.

[Author]

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