Sajidah Yousuf
Srinagar: Director SKIMS Soura A.G Ahangar today urged recovered COVID-19 persons to come forward to donate their blood plasma.
Director Ahangar said that by donating plasma, recovered Covid-19 patient can save lives of infected patients. He added,”Together we can fight and defeat this deadly Coronavirus.”
“This virus is novel and it has been behaving in a novel way. We have to remain ready and well equipped, as we never know when the positive COVID-19 cases can rise and vice-versa,” he said. Dr. Ahangar added that the recovered Covid-19 people are warriors who is helping the administration in fighting and defeating this novel virus.
“All the COVID-19 positive recovered patients can be the saviors of humanity amid this crisis,” Dr Ahangar said. “My message to the people is to remain stick to the WHO guidelines, health advisories and work together to fight the pandemic. People should know that COVID–19 is real. Stay home and stay safe,” he said.
The Director said that SKIMS authorities are issuing an appeal to the Public at large to come forward for Plasma donation from those who were recovered from COVID-19. He said that SKIMS is continuing to provide quality healthcare across Jammu and Kashmir and in this regard the Institute is in a process of installing more sophisticated machinery for conducting plasmapheresis for COVID-19 patients.
“We have already installed one sophisticated machines by which we will be now able to conduct plasmapheresis for COVID-19 patients with some precision and utmost professionalism,” Dr Ahangar said.
He further said that SKIMS has started plasmapheresis using Spectra Optia Cell Separator apheresis machine which is the state-of-art machine used for plasmapheresis in COVID patients. “The machine was procured on a war front basis to combat the COVID-19 crisis and the machine is fitted with a highly sophisticated connector device,” he said.
Plasmapheresis has been used on a trial basis for COVID- 19 patients and has shown promising results. Plasma Therapy was started for COVID patients about a month back at SKIMS. The Director said that the use of this machine is ideal for the extraction of plasma in donors who have recovered from this disease.
He said that Plasmapheresis helps to extract more plasma per operation and returns the blood cells of the donor to him. “This way more plasma can be extracted and one-timer a donor can donate for 2 patients. Since only Plasma is used a donor can donate plasma more frequently,” Dr. Ahangar said.
