Hyderabad: Gudur Narayana Reddy pitches for plasma therapy for Covid patients
TPCC Treasurer Gudur Narayana Reddy addressing a press conference at Gandhi Bhavan on Wednesday
Hyderabad: TPCC treasurer Gudur Narayana Reddy on Thursday said that the Central and Telangana governments were going too slow on plasma therapy to treat coronavirus patients.
Narayana Reddy, who just recovered from Covid-19, said that the trials of plasma therapy conducted last month were reportedly successful with many critical patients getting recovered from coronavirus.
He said that the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has approved 38 institutions for participating in a randomly controlled study to assess the safety and efficacy of convalescent plasma to limit complications associated with Covid-19.
He said the ESIC and Gandhi Medical College were among the institutions which had ICMR approval to conduct plasma therapy trials.
The Congress leader said that in the absence of vaccine or medicine to treat Covid-19, the results of plasma therapy, so far, have been highly encouraging.
Therefore, he said that the authorities should focus on increasing the scale of plasma therapy.
In medical terms, in plasma therapy, the plasma of a person who has recovered from COVID-19, is drawn and transferred to people who have freshly contracted the disease as the same has sufficient antibodies to fight the disease.
However, he said that the authorities were not finding enough plasma donors. People, who have recovered from Covid-19, carry the highest antibodies to attack the novel coronavirus after two to three weeks of testing negative.
Therefore, he said that the authorities should constitute a team of expert counselors to convince recovered patients to donate their plasma.
Narayana Reddy pointed out that a critically ill Covid-19 patient from Hyderabad has fully recovered after receiving the convalescent plasma therapy approved by the ICMR. Trails were started on May 11 and the patient recovered in 10 days.
Since he has just recovered from Covid-19, Narayana Reddy announced that he was ready to donate plasma if he fulfills the eligibility criteria set by the ICMR and other authorities.