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Finding plasma donors made easy

Published - August 16, 2020 10:57 pm IST - ANANTAPUR

Those who have recovered from COVID-19 can register themselves on an online portal for the benefit of others

Anantapur Collector Gandham Chandrudu releasing the friends2support.org poster on COVID-19 plasma donation, in Anantapur on Sunday.

The world’s largest blood donors’ database with free access, Friends2Support.org, has added a new section called ‘COVID-19 Plasma Donor’ on its website, android and iOS apps.

All COVID-19 patients, who have recovered from the virus attack and are willing to help other COVID-19 patients in plasma therapy, can voluntarily register themselves as plasma donors after the stipulated waiting period of four weeks from testing negative.

A winner of a United Nations award twice since its inception in 2005, friends2support.org founder Shaik Shareef said on Sunday that only a small number of COVID-19 positive persons can be treated with plasma therapy and even for them, searching for a plasma donor from that particular blood group is a difficult process.

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“To make things easy for patients and relatives of COVID-19 positive persons and the medical fraternity in finding a plasma donor, we have been running this section for the past one week on a trial basis. Without announcing about this provision, many of those who had defeated COVID-19 in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have already registered themselves as voluntary plasma donors on the app and website,” Mr. Shareef said.

Currently, there are five lakh normal blood donors voluntarily registered on this website from six countries, with the majority of them hailing from different States in India. He has requested the hospital superintendents, and managers of COVID Care Centres to display the posters at the COVID-19 Hospitals and COVID Care Centres so that those getting discharged can get motivated to donate plasma and register themselves on the app or website to help people in that particular geographical area.

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