While the demands for Oxygen cylinders, oxygen beds and some Covid-19 medicines seems to have reduced on the social media, what’s gaining traction and is constantly in demand is the plasma of a Covid recovered patient.
Attendants of many patients suffering from severe Covid-19 infection often seem to be in look out for plasma of a particular blood group. However, irony remains that there is still some amount of ambiguity in the medical fraternity over usage of plasma therapy in Covid patients and moreover, the governments – be it of state or central – have failed to setup any plasma banks so far.
Medically, convalescent plasma is a way of artificially inducing passive immunity by transferring blood plasma from patients who have had a disease to a patient who is currently suffering from it.
Families of patients run from pillar-to-post for getting plasma, which is in short supply. Even after a year of this pandemic being in lives of people, there is no well-defined infrastructure to ensure availability of plasma.
But at regional level, there are efforts being made to address the shortage of plasma. In Noida, district police had in April launched a helpline number to facilitate plasma donation. It has also created an online Google document for the purpose and is encouraging the police men who have recovered from the disease to donate plasma.
Similarly in Delhi, an IAS officer-turned-actor Abhishek Singh has launched an online portal ‘Unitedbyblood’ to streamline the plasma donation process and an oxygen taxi for refilling the empty oxygen cylinders.
The portal, launched a week ago, was founded with an aim to create a repository for plasma by establishing real-time and seamless contact between donors and recipients.
Talking about the initiative, Singh told a news agency, “There is a lot of information asymmetry regarding blood plasma for COVID-19 patients. There are very few donors available and very few plasma banks.”
“People on social media are looking for blood plasma and plasma donors. I thought why not make a platform to bring everybody together at a digital platform. On one hand, we have donors and on another hand, we have people requesting plasma. The concept is similar to booking an Ola and Uber, by capturing the location of both donors and those who need it,” he added.
While these individual efforts are commendable, it is important that government’s do step in to fill the gap and help in creation of widespread plasma banks that can help individuals in need.
