(Image source from: indiatoday)

To encourage COVID-19 recovered patients to donate plasma, Karnataka government announced appreciation money of Rs. 5000 for every donor.

Plasma of recovered COVID-19 patients can help treating the sick and can also help in early recovery. Karnataka government has recently announced that it would give Rs. 5000 for plasma donors as a token of appreciation.

The convalescent plasma can help bring down the COVID-19 mortality rate according to researchers. People who have completely recovered from coronavirus are eligible to donate their plasma to help the ill patients.

K. Sudhakar, Minister of Karnataka for Medical education said that he had appealed to the recovered patients to donate plasma and save lives.

Till date, 17,390 people have been recovered from coronavirus out of which 4992 are from Bangalore itself.

Dr. Sudhakar had requested recovered people to come forward voluntarily and help patients recover by donating their plasma.

He also said that already 5 people have been subjected to plasma recovery therapy and out of those 5, three people have recovered and the therapy did not work on two other patients who were already on their death bed.

Recently, Delhi has launched two plasma banks to encourage people to donate their plasma. On the other hand, Maharashtra government has launched plasma therapy cum trial project for the treatment of COVID-19 patients which has become the world’s largest project till date.

In convalescent plasma therapy process, antibodies from the blood of recovered patients will be used to treat critical COVID-19 patients. Plasma from the recovered patients will be injected to the sick patients who are undergoing the treatment.

Antibodies are the protective proteins produced by the immune system in response to the presence of virus or bacteria inside the body.

The plasma of a recently recovered patient contains large number of antibodies which can be used to treat an ill patient. In particular, the plasma will only be used on critical patients who antibodies cannot protect them from the foreign substances such as virus.

The trials of plasma therapy are being carried out by many countries and are showing promising results.

By Gayatri Yellayi