Bengaluru: Manipal Hospitals launches plasma bank

Bengaluru: Manipal Hospitals on Monday launched a plasma bank in the city for advanced treatment of COVID 19 patients and urged those who had recovered from coronavirus to come forward as donors.

“The key objective of this drive is to make plasma therapy readily accessible to all COVID 19 patients seeking treatment in Manipal Hospitals and registered through AMBER HEALTH,” the hospital said in a statement.

It appealed to all coronavirus recovered patients to come forward to help those in need to win the battle against the pandemic. Dr C Shivaram, Head-Transfusion Medicine, Manipal Hospitals, said plasma therapy has turned out to be the shield of defence that can fight COVID and is a good supplement to treatment modalities in use.

He said a patient must be free from COVID 19 symptoms for at least 14 days to qualify as a plasma donor. “Patients need not worry about their antibodies during donation as we collect only a small portion of the antibodies.

Additionally, in case of re-infection by the COVID virus, the body can make antibodies very quickly within hours,because of the memory White cells (B cells) in the blood,” Dr Shivaram said.