Medical Education Minister Dr Sudhakar had announced COVID-19 patients who come forward will be eligible for a Rs 5,000 incentive..
Over a month-and-a-half after the state government in Karnataka introduced an incentive scheme for recovered COVID-19 patients to donate plasma, no such volunteer has been reimbursed the promised sum of Rs 5,000. Medical Education Minister Dr Sudhakar on July 15 had announced the scheme, wherein volunteers among recovered COVID-19 patients who come forward to donate plasma, will be eligible for this sum of money. The state government on July 14 had passed an order to this effect. A government circular issued to all hospitals on August 21 on plasma therapy guidelines mentions this order as ‘Annexure 1’. Dr Namitha A Kumar, a functionary at the Open Platform for Rare Diseases who is also coordinating plasma donors at the TTK Blood Bank, said that there is a dearth of plasma donors and the government is not doing enough to address the issue. She said, however, that the incentive programme announced by the government is unethical to begin with. “All donors who are coming forward are doing it for being part of a good cause. No private institution had any money for the purpose. But it is an unethical move as for the same reason paid blood donation was banned in the country. The paid blood donation practice had in the past led to spread of diseases and other health issues,” said Dr Namitha. Another volunteer working with hospitals for coordinating plasma donors said that while a majority of donors come and will not want the money, many who have been at a disadvantage due to the pandemic ask for it. TNM spoke to officials in both government and private hospitals in Bengaluru — where plasma donation by recovered COVID-19 patients is underway — who echoed the same. Even some donors who had donated plasma said that they were not informed about the incentive programme at all. Dr Dheemanth, working on coordinating plasma donation at Bengaluru’s Victoria Hospital, said a total of 38 persons have donated plasma. He said the reimbursement process is yet to begin and that he would take up the issue with the Medical Superintendent. “For now, we have noted all the donors, so we will check with our Superintendent about how to proceed with the reimbursements,” he said. A doctor working with a private hospital in Bengaluru where more than 150 recovered patients have donated plasma said that they are yet to hear back from the government. “We have written to the government. Although they have announced it long back, there has been no money sent for this purpose,” said the doctor. According to experts, plasma therapy involves injecting plasma of recovered patients to COVID-19 patients who are at a critical stage, requiring ventilator support or artificial oxygen supply. Although at an experimental stage, the therapy has shown promising signs of recovery among patients who had reached an advanced state of the disease. Officials at the Karnataka government's Critical Support Team for COVID-19 had recently told TNM that the success rate is close to 50% in this mode of treatment. A source in Minister Sudhakar’s office claimed that money will be transferred to the donors in the coming days using their Aadhaar details.
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