There is only one grocery store in the small town of Richland, Georgia, where 36-year-old Sandra James lives. For the past few months, she has been unable to find a special baby formula for her 8-month-old son, Kenson, who has hives and loses her hair when she drinks milk-based formulas.
She initially checked out five Walmart stores nearby, driving hours after leaving work until she found the special formula she needed. Sometimes she went to five or six stores a day all the way to Alabama before she could find a box.
Meanwhile, she gives her son more water and mashed vegetables to try to make his formula last longer.
“It’s just exhausting, very exhausting,” she said.
Parents who have tried to buy online say they have faced not only higher prices but also fraud. Two weeks ago, 30-year-old K-Ray Knowles from Oregon, Illinois, sent money to a stranger in exchange for cans with a special formula she needed for her 4-month-old son Callan. The cans never came, she said, and the seller’s Facebook account was deleted a few days later.
“People are especially careful now,” she said. “It’s really heartbreaking that people are being snatched by this kind of scarcity.
In San Antonio, Ms. Marquez said she never thought she would rely on baby formula to keep her daughter healthy at such an advanced age. But then her daughter was diagnosed and told that the special formula was the only thing that would protect her from the hospital.
From the beginning of April she supplements her diet with fruits, vegetables, ground turkey and other plant proteins.
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