Karnal youngsters motivate survivors to donate plasma

Parveen Arora

Tribune News Service

Karnal, April 22

Subham Gupta, a youth of Karnal city, starts his day by attending numerous calls for assistance to arrange plasma for Covid patients. He and his teammates, who are associated with NGO ‘Sahranaya Kadam’, start contacting Covid survivors to donate their plasma.

They have convinced around 70 people to donate plasma since September 2020 and most of the help has been extended to patients of Delhi, Gurugram, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, and Dera Bassi.

“We are 40 active members of the NGO who have further formed WhatsApp groups of around 4,000 blood donors across the state. We have been working for blood donations since 2015 when there was dengue outbreak in the district,” said Gupta.

“A plasma bank was started at Kalpana Chawla Government Medical College (KCGMC) in August 2020. In September, plasma shortage surfaced. So, we decided to motivate recovered patients to donate plasma. We arranged lists of Covid survivors and started contacting them. Earlier, we had faced problem as people were reluctant. But now, people are realising the importance of plasma. So they are coming forward,” he said while getting the antibodies tested of three Covid survivors at the KCGMC.

Akash Arora, another member of the NGO, said that they have been receiving several calls daily from different parts of Haryana, Delhi, UP and Punjab for plasma after the outbreak of the second wave. “We try our level best to assist the affected family by arranging plasma in Karnal or in their cities as we have over 4,000 volunteers who are further in touch with recently recovered patients,” he said.

Akash Gera, who is also a member of the NGO and got his antibodies tested on Thursday for plasma donation, said that their team members get plasma donated at KCGMC after following proper protocol. Later, the KCGMC authorities provide plasma to the needy family. Like Subham, there are Himanshu, Jitesh, Sachin and many other youths who participate in this campaign actively.

Dr Sachin Garg, in charge of KCGMC blood bank, said that these youths are working hard.