Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) on Saturday started collecting plasmas for starting Convalescent Plasma Therapy (CPT) on experimental basis, aiming to save lives of Covid-19 infected patients.

“We’ve collected plasmas from two doctors who’ve recovered from COVID-19 disease,” Prof Dr M A Khan, Hematology Department Chief, Dhaka Medical College Hospital, told UNB.

CPT is extracting blood plasma from an individual who has recovered from coronavirus illness and transfusing it into a patient who is sick.

Prof Khan said, “Plasma from one’s blood can be used for two patients and it has no side effect and any infection risk.”

“We’ll primarily administer CPT to treat 45 COVID-19 patients,” he said adding that another 45 such patients will be kept aside for a comparative study.

The experiment will start soon, he said adding that getting plasma is a big challenge.

India, the UK, the USA, Italy, China and some other countries started CPT for COVID-19 patients to reduce fatalities from the disease.

Earlier on April 12, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) called for applications to study the safety and efficacy of CPT in managing complications associated with COVID-19.

On April 25, the UK government approved the clinical trial of CPT to help its National Health Service (NHS) for treating COVID-19 patients.

World physicians used CPT effectively before the specific treatment was developed for H1N1 influenza (Spanish virus), Ebola, SARS-1 and MERS virus.

Bangladesh has so far reported 20,995 coronavirus cases and 314 deaths.