Dozens of people in the U.S. died in the outbreak last fall of fungal meningitis, traced back to contaminated steroid injections from the New England Compounding Center. As a result, things are changing at Idaho's compounding pharmacies.
Idaho's pharmacy regulators are rewriting the rules for compounding, and at least one local pharmacy is taking action to reassure customers. "The rules are changing," says Berk Fraser, deputy executive director of the Idaho State Board of Pharmacy.
The board will start taking public comment on the rules in August.
"We've just never had any compounding rules," Fraser says. "We started before [the meningitis outbreak], just discussing compounding rules, and it really came to a head at that point. ... This was scary, and I don't believe we had any [deaths] in our state, but you want to get ahead of the curve."
At the same time, state and federal lawmakers are trying to increase oversight of compounding pharmacies. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had already sent inspectors to some pharmacies, but it cranked up its regulatory actions after the outbreak.
The outbreak also prompted a small Kuna pharmacy to seek national certification.
Travis Walthall, a pharmacist who lives in Meridian, first learned compounding - "like doing a recipe" - in pharmacy school at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. After criss-crossing the country and working at Wal-Mart pharmacies for several years, he took a spot behind the counter at Vic's Family Pharmacy in downtown Kuna.
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