These experts are seeing spikes in drug shortages. ‘I view this as a national health emergency’

Shortages of essential drugs are threatening to become a crisis in the United States, health care providers say.

While cancer drugs have been most publicized recently, experts in pharmacy say they often find themselves scrambling to find common generic medications such as antibiotics and fear having to resort to rationing.

They say only a national effort to bring generic drug manufacturing back from overseas, among other steps, will help relieve the problem, which mostly affects injectable drugs...