Lok Nayak hospital to house Delhi’s second plasma bank

Lok Nayak hospital has already set up an apheresis machine, which is used to separate the blood components. The collection of plasma from recovered Covid-19 patients will start this week, the hospital said.

Delhi’s biggest treatment facility for Covid-19 patients – the 2,000-bed Lok Nayak hospital – will house the city’s second convalescent plasma bank, the government announced on Monday. Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal will inaugurate it on Tuesday.

Health workers shift a person on a stretcher into the Covid-19 ward at Lok Nayak Jai Prakash (LNJP) Hospital in New Delhi on Monday.(Mohd Zakir/HT Photo)

The Delhi government had inaugurated the country’s first plasma bank at the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences in south Delhi’s Vasant Kunj on July 2. The Delhi government-run Guru Teg Bahadur hospital, a dedicated Covid-19 treatment hospital, has also begun work to set up the third plasma bank.

Lok Nayak hospital has already set up an apheresis machine, which is used to separate the blood components. The collection of plasma from recovered patients will start this week, the hospital said. The hospital has already discharged over 3,600 Covid-19 patients, many of whom will be eligible to make plasma donations.

“The plasmapheresis machine has already been set up and will start collecting plasma from recovered patients from Monday. Within a week, we will be able to set up a bank as well to store this plasma,” said Dr Suresh Kumar, medical director, Lok Nayak hospital.

Convalescent plasma therapy uses the blood component plasma — rich in virus-fighting antibodies from patients who have recovered from the infection — to aid the immune system of Covid patients. It is still an experimental therapy that has been approved by the health ministry for use in moderate patients, whose need for oxygen increases despite providing oxygen support and steroids.

Lok Nayak was the first government hospital in the country to administer convalescent plasma therapy in April as part of the COPLA trial being conducted by the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences, which houses the first plasma bank of Delhi. Under the trial at Lok Nayak hospital, 14 patients received convalescent plasma and 15 patients received fresh frozen plasma with no therapeutic benefits, to study the efficacy of the therapy for Covid-19.

The study showed that those who received plasma fared better with their respiratory rate coming down, oxygen saturation improving and their sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA) score reducing, a yardstick that predicts ICU mortality.

The duration of ICU stay and hospitalisation also came down in the patients who received convalescent plasma. For the second phase of the trial, 200 patients each from Lok Nayak hospital and Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality hospital will receive plasma therapy.

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“ILBS was a good start but all hospitals in the city cannot rely on one organisation for the plasma. I think, at least the bigger hospitals -- both government and private -- should start asking their own patients to come back and donate plasma. People will also be more comfortable coming back to the same hospital and have a feeling of social service helping the health hub that helped them recover. Even we have started asking our patients to come back and donate. We started collecting plasma two or three days ago and are using it for our own patients,” said Dr Neeraj Gupta, professor of pulmonary medicine at Safdarjung hospital.