The Therapeutic Goods Association (TGA) says "manufacturing issues and unexpected increases in demand" are to blame for the saline and fluids shortage.
There are three "sponsors" registered with the TGA to import, export or make the affected IV fluids.
A spokesperson from one of these sponsors, Baxter Healthcare, said it had been experiencing "a notable increase in demand for sterile fluid products in Australia as a result of multiple external factors, including increased customer demand and constrained supply, due in part to outages from other suppliers".
Baxter Healthcare did not respond to questions from the ABC about the source of this increased demand for IV fluids, or where the outages were occurring in the supply chain.
