The phrase "an insufficiency of" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when you want to talk about a lack of or scarcity of something. For example: "The school was faced with an insufficiency of resources to meet the needs of its growing student body."
Until the 20th century, the spread of machine industry was retarded by customs & institutions that belonged to an earlier era of scarcity--an age marked by an insufficiency of extra-human energy, of material goods, & even food Natural scarcity & backward agricultural practices, plus socially enforced penury & deprivation, were the incentives to daily work.
Jack Burden suffers from an insufficiency of ego and finds himself in thrall to a bully.
Eventually the pancreatic cells may wear out, causing an insufficiency of insulin that resembles Type 1 diabetes.
"There was an insufficiency of the right amount of information available on this topic for the analysts," the report said.
Everybody accepts now the fragmentation of the railway system ended up in a situation where there was just an insufficiency of co-ordination.
Marcher suffers from an insufficiency of sexuality, of vital spirit, which is hardly the Wheelers' problem, but, like him, they have no idea what to do with themselves.
The idea of attaching PEG molecules to enzymes was developed elsewhere about 35 years ago, but in 1986 Hershfield and his colleagues at Duke were the first to demonstrate a clinical application a PEGylated version of an enzyme called ADA1, used to treat children with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) as a result of a genetic insufficiency of ADA1.
The result of a mild insufficiency of calcium over the long term may be a factor in osteoporosis, a disease characterized by thinning of the bones.
The hyperplastic effects of homocysteine may be mediated in part by a physiological insufficiency of methyl donors as shown by decreases in SAM.
However, the relevance of a relative insufficiency of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis in critical illness, which is diagnosed by a suppressed cortisol response to exogenous adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) irrespective of the plasma cortisol concentration, is controversial.
But most NHS commissioners, who pay for services locally, told the authors that increasing demand since April 2013 meant there was "a current insufficiency of beds".
