Plasma therapy to begin at SGPGI, Lucknow

New Delhi, Apr 28: After the King George's Medical University, another state-run hospital here also has plans to start plasma therapy for treating COVID-19 patients.

"The Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute for Medical Sciences (SGPGI) will start plasma therapy with the cooperation of ICMR. A special team of doctors has been constituted for this purpose. We are waiting for a green signal from the ICMR," SGPGI director Prof R K Dhiman told PTI on Monday.

On April 25, Tauseef Khan, a resident doctor at the King George's Medical University (KGMU) offered his plasma for the treatment of those suffering from the deadly disease. He had recently been cured of coronavirus.

Khan, in his late 20s, had contracted coronavirus from a patient while working at KGMU and tested positive for the infection on March 17.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had recently asked medical authorities to promote plasma therapy for the treatment of COVID-19 patients after examining its efficacy.

The Chief Minister, chairing a high-level meeting of officials to take stock of the state's anti-COVID-19 fight, also stressed upon the need for thorough testing of people living in and around the areas declared as hotspots, Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Awanish Awasthi had said.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had recently allowed states to start clinical trials of plasma therapy.

Nearly, 100 medical institutes have shown interest to study how safe and efficient plasma therapy is in treating COVID-19 patients.

Several states like Kerala, Gujarat and Punjab have already started using the therapy for coronavirus-infected patients.

Convalescent Plasma Therapy is an experimental procedure for COVID-19 patients. In this treatment, plasma from a cured COVID-19 patient is transfused to a critically ill coronavirus patient.

The idea behind this therapy is that immunity can be transferred from a healthy person to a sick patient using convalescent plasma. This therapy uses antibodies from the blood of a cured coronavirus patient to treat another critical patient.

The process for donating plasma is similar to donating blood and takes about an hour.
Several countries like the UK and the US have also started plasma therapy trials.