LEBANON — In spite of an ongoing national shortage of some generic cancer drugs, Dartmouth Health, which provides cancer care in the Twin States, is not facing an acute shortage at least for now, officials said.

According to the last update DH’s drug specialty panel received in early June, the health system has a two- to four-week supply of the drugs, Dr. Gary Schwartz, a medical oncologist who serves as physician co-chairman of the panel.

“We’re still getting these drugs from our suppliers,” he said in a Tuesday phone interview.

Schwartz said he hopes that patients will be reassured by this information amid national conversations about shortages of commonly used chemotherapy drugs such as cisplatin and carboplatin.

The drugs are what he described as “conventional” chemotherapy drugs, which kill rapidly dividing cells without a specific target. The lack of a specific target means they are used to treat several different types of cancer.

These are “lifesaving drugs,” which are “still a mainstay of treatment for many, many people with cancer,” Schwartz said.

The shortages stem from the closing last fall of a manufacturing plant in India due to quality concerns. At this point, they have “not affected cancer care in the Dartmouth system,” Schwartz said. Still, he said, some patients are anxious about it.

While Schwartz said he isn’t sure what has prevented DH from experiencing the shortages, he said the system is able to purchase in larger quantities than smaller cancer care providers.

The Dartmouth Cancer Center provides care at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon and at locations throughout the Twin States, including Bennington and St. Johnsbury, Vt., and Manchester, Nashua and Keene, N.H., according to the center’s website. It also provides care through regional affiliates, which in the Upper Valley include Springfield (Vt.) Hospital; Valley Regional Healthcare in Claremont; and the White River Junction VA Medical Center.

Audra Burns, a DH spokeswoman, said in an email that minimizing the impact of supply chain disruptions is one of DH’s strategic priorities.

“We have a team dedicated to planning and responding to shortages, which has helped in navigating this challenging situation that has put a strain on health care organizations across the country,” she wrote.

Meanwhile, cancer care in the Burlington-based University of Vermont Health Network has been affected by the shortages, according to Phillip Rau, a UVM Health Network spokesman.

To mitigate the effects of the shortage, the network has increased information-sharing between pharmacies across the network regarding supplies of cisplatin and carboplatin and opened channels with third-party suppliers to obtain the medications whenever possible, Rau said. The network also is closely tracking the use of these medications and has established a physician-led group to work with cancer-care providers to determine if treatment regimes can be adjusted, while maintaining the same level of effectiveness.

Schwartz said part of the challenge is that there “really aren’t a lot of alternatives” for cisplatin and carboplatin.

Should DH experience an acute shortage, it would convene a group of stakeholders from across the affected parts of the Dartmouth Cancer Center, including those treating cancers of the female reproductive system, lungs, esophagus, bladder and breast, Schwartz said. The group would then need to determine how to prioritize the drug.

“We would think that it’s going to be very, very unlikely to get to a point (where clinicians are) allocating (cancer drugs) to some people and not to others,” he said.

In his 20 years on DH’s drug panel, Schwartz said the health system has had to do this only once, in 2011, during a shortage of a generic drug called Paxil, and the health system went for two weeks without any.

“We’re optimistic that we’ll ride out this shortage again,” he said.

Amid the national shortage, Schwartz said, one DH bladder cancer doctor told him he has gotten referrals from outside the DH system, but it hasn’t been “a large number of people coming into our practice.”

When people do call, Schwartz said, DH providers “take it on a case-by-case basis.”

Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.