NEW DELHI: Delhi government-run Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital (RGSSH), a dedicated COVID-19 facility, has received nod from the ICMR to conduct plasma therapy on 200 coronavirus patients, senior officials said on Tuesday.
RGSSH has treated over a thousand patients after being declared a dedicated facility, and CM Arvind Kejriwal on Monday felicitated the 1,000th patient who was discharged on July 3.
“We received the ICMR nod about 10 days ago, and currently we have the permit to do plasma therapy on 200 recipients. We are making all arrangements before we can begin, but we are short of manpower as of now,” said a senior doctor at RGSSH.
He said advertisements have been put out by the authorities to hire trained technicians.
“A convalescent plasma therapy facility needs a lot of paraphernalia and trained staff. We are trying to augment our infrastructure as well as in the process of hiring required staff, after which we will begin the process” a senior official said.
Recently, Kejriwal had inaugurated the country’s first ‘plasma bank’ at the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS), run by the city government. On the first day, 10 people donated at ILBS, according to sources. The CM has been appealing to people, who have fully recovered, to come forward and donate plasma to COVID patients.
Recently, the city government-run LNJP Hospital had resumed plasma therapy at the facility after getting a fresh nod from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), which gave it the permit to conduct the therapy on 200 patients.