BHUBANESWAR: A high-level meeting chaired by health minister Naba Kishore Das on Thursday decided to start “plasma therapy” for treatment of
Covid-19 patients.
Das said the therapy will start in four hospitals: SCB Medical College and Hospital and Aswini Hospital in Cuttack besides KIMS and SUM hospitals in Bhubaneswar. Representatives of these hospitals and senior health department officers were present in the meeting.
“A technical committee having representatives from the four hospitals will decide the treatment protocol and issue necessary guidelines regarding the plasma therapy,” the health minister said. Just like all the on-going treatment and diagnostics for the viral disease, the
plasma therapy will also be entirely free of costs for the patients, he said.
Additional chief secretary (health) Pradipta Kumar Mohapatra said these four hospitals will counsel the cured patients because they would be the potential blood donors for the new treatment procedure. “The hospitals have database of the discharged patients. They will reach out to them to find out potential voluntary donors,” he said.
So far, more than 5500 patients have recovered from Covid. They would make a good pool of plasma donors. “There would be plasma banks in the hospitals for Covid patients. The hospitals together will come out with a process to use the plasma. They will assess patients who may be fit cases for plasma therapy,” Mohapatra said.
The officer said the hospitals will take informed consents from the patients or their attendants before using plasma for any Covid patient. These four hospitals have already blood component separation facilities where plasma can be extracted from blood.
Dr Ashok Mahapatra, former AIIMS Bhubaneswar director and vice-chancellor of SOA University, which runs the SUM Covid Hospital, said moderate and serious patients would be considered for plasma therapy. Notably, ICMR had launched a multi-centre clinical trial of plasma therapy in May, but no hospital from
Odisha was part of it.
The government also asked the Covid hospitals to procure the two medicines approved for Covid, remdesivir (brand name Covifor) and favipiravir (brand name FabiFlu), for treating the patients. The medicines are already available in Odisha. The government would reimburse the costs, the additional chief secretary (health) said.