Jubilee Post News & Views
Lucknow: Plasma therapy that is being tried as part of treatment for coronavirus patients across countries shall start for COVID-19 patients in Uttar Pradesh too. And the start shall be from Lucknow.
Lucknow’s King George’s Medical University has obtained necessary permission by the drug controller general of India and now work is being done to collect donors. It may be mentioned here that plasma donor in this will be treated patients who had completed 21-days of treatment discharged from hospital. The idea is these patients have developed antibodies for coronavirus and thus their plasms if transfused to patients undergoing treatment at hospital shall help in their recovery.
IN plasma therapy, plasma from cured patients is first obtained and then transfused in to patients under treatment for COVID-19. The collection of plasma is likely to be done on Wednesday.
COVID patients who develop antibody can donate plasma after 28 days of completing treatment. We have a list such patients, says Dr Tulika Chandra head of the department of transfusion medicine at the KGMU.
The plasma will be obtained with apheresis, a process in which plasma will be separated from the blood. Once the plasma is collected it will be transfused in patients after necessary screening. Medical team from the department of medicine doctors will closely observe patients.
The state has reported 1200 cases and 18 deaths while 140 patients have got discharged from hospitals. This makes the number of potential donors high in the state. KGMU is the first centre to start plasma therapy and if successful it shall train doctors from other hospitals as well to conduct similar exercise in treating patients.
However permission from the centre for this therapy needs high level of precision in transfusion which very few medical institutes have in the state hence it will be difficult for all to get such a permission.
