Written By: Longjam Dineshwori | Updated : June 22, 2020 10:17 AM IST
ICMR की स्टडी के बावजूद दिल्ली में कोविड-19 मरीजों को दी जाएगी प्लाज्मा थेरेपी
Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain, who tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday, is doing better after he was administered plasma therapy at a private hospital in the national capital.
Hospital sources informed media persons on Sunday that his fever has subsided and oxygen level has improved and he could be shifted to the general ward by Monday. The 55-year-old minister is currently under observation in the intensive care unit (ICU) of Max Hospital in Saket, where he was shifted from Delhi government-run Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital on Friday after his condition deteriorated.
Jain was admitted to Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital a week ago after he developed high fever and complained of breathing difficulty.
After he was found to be suffering from pneumonia and complained of breathlessness and giddiness on Friday morning, he was immediately shifted to the Max Hospital in south Delhi and kept on oxygen support. A CT scan later revealed that the pneumonic patch in his lungs had expanded.
Hospital sources told a news agency that a team of doctors from a few government and private hospitals has been kept on standby to assist the doctors attending to him, if needed.
Jain is the fourth AAP leaders to have tested positive for the novel coronavirus -- the other three MLAs include Atishi, who represents the Kalkaji constituency in south Delhi, Vishesh Ravi (Karol Bagh) and Rajkumar Anand (Patel Nagar).
Plasma therapy is an experimental medical procedure in which critical COVID-19 patients are treated using plasma from those who have recovered from the viral infection. Plasma is the liquid part of the blood that is rich in antibodies, which are produced by your immune cells to fight infections.
While the centre had stated that there was no concrete evidence to support plasma therapy as coronavirus treatment, there have many reports of COVID-19 patients getting cured after being subjected to the procedure. The donor of blood plasma should be a COVID-19 patient, who has recovered from the condition and whose blood is sufficiently rich in antibodies against the infection. The person has to be completely cured and asymptomatic for at least 28 days before donating. One person can donate 400ml of plasma and it can save two lives.
On May 4, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had approved 21 institutions for participating in a randomised controlled study to assess the safety and efficacy of convalescent plasma to limit COVID-19 associated complications in moderate disease.
This treatment option is not recommended outside of clinical trials. According to the ICMR guidelines, hospitals and institutions planning to use this experimental medical procedure on COVID-19 patients should do so in a clinical trial with protocols that are cleared by the Institutional Ethics Committee.
The Union Health Ministry had also warned against its use outside of clinical trials. Plasma therapy for the treatment of COVI-19 patients is at an experimental stage and has the potential to cause life-threatening complications if not used in a proper manner under proper guidelines, it had said last month.
Meanwhile, India's total tally has jumped to 4,25,282 and as many as 13,699 people have lost their lives to the deadly viral disease, according to data on the Union Health Ministry website.
