Plasma therapy for Covid cases begins at BHU

Varanasi: The Banaras Hindu University’s hospital, which is housing level-3 facility for critical Covid-19 cases, has officially started plasma therapy from Thursday.
However, the officials could not make it clear whether any plasma donor turned up at the hospital on the inaugural day of this service.
The decision for starting the facility of plasma therapy at BHU hospital was taken at a joint meeting of divisional commissioner Deepak Agrawal and district magistrate Kaushal Raj Sharma with BHU vice-chancellor Prof Rakesh Bhatnagar, director IMS-BHU Prof RK Jain and other hospital authorities on Wednesday late evening.
Talking to TOI on Thursday, the commissioner said after completion of the basic formalities it was decided to begin the plasma therapy facility at BHU.
Appealing the cured patients to come forward for donating plasma, the DM said that as per the Covid-19 protocol, the people who have fully recovered from this infection for at least four weeks can donate plasma. Following necessary test of donated plasma it will be transfused to the critical Covid-19 positive patients, who are on ventilators, to save their life.
This facility was started at a time when the Covid-19 cases are jumping sharply and frequency of death due to infection is also on increase. When contacted, additional chief medical officer Dr SS Kanojia said the BHU hospital authorities could not make it clear whether any plasma donor had turned up for donation on Thursday.
Apart from the issue of plasma therapy, the commissioner said that many other issues related to Covid-19 treatment facility as well as other services of the hospital were also discussed with varsity officials. He said that regarding outdoor patient department services the BHU authorities said that it will continue tele-medicine service in place of regular OPD by enhancing it. The BHU authorities said that 20 lines for tele-medicine OPD has been started so far. Similarly, all emergency surgeries have also been started.
About unavailability of Remdesivir, an antiviral medicine being used in Covid-19 cases, at Amrit and Umang pharmacies of BHU hospital, the DM asked them to apply the orders for it on prescribed formats to ensure it availability at both outlets. Due to its unavailability, the needy patients are bound to procure it from Delhi.
Regarding expansion of Covid-19 treatment facilities, the officials asked BHU to utilise super- speciality hospital completely for it. Commissioner said that the varsity officials said that they would assess the requirement of manpower and other resources to expand this services and which they were asked to complete this exercise and raise their demand before local administration to fulfil it.
The officials also asked to enhance the capacity of laboratories to avoid delay in testing of Covid-19 samples. The commissioner said the BHU officials were also asked to raise their financial demands in this regard so that it can be met through state disaster relief fund.