A funds crunch has prevented the dedicated Covid-19 unit at Bokaro General Hospital (BGH) from starting plasma therapy even as other healthcare units across the state are offering the facility.

The BGH management claimed that it has asked the district administration to provide funds for the equipment needed to start a plasma bank.

Health department officials, however, feel that BGH, being a unit of Maharatna Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), can easily buy the equipment.

Civil surgeon Dr Ashok Pathak said that a “move to install a plasma therapy unit at BGH was undertaken but hasn’t been fulfilled yet. We are still in the process of installing it.”

In the first week of August, BGH began working on a plan to soon start convalescent plasma therapy as well as plasmapheresis amid rising symptomatic and serious Covid-19 cases. The hospital had begun preparing a database of cured patients.

The official in charge of BGH’s blood bank, Dr Shravan, had been asked to maintain the contact numbers, blood groups and the dates of discharge of Covid-19 patients. The database was meant to help in reaching out to cured patients for plasma donation. The hospital authorities could also administer plasma directly to serious Covid-19 patients as part of convalescent plasma therapy.

“As per ICMR guidelines, a person is eligible for plasma donation only after 14 days of recovery and if tests for the coronavirus on RT-PCR come negative,” said a BGH official. He said: “People who’ve recovered from Covid-19 have antibodies, which are proteins their bodies use to fight off infections to the disease, in their blood.”

Since April, more than 450 patients of the coronavirus have been admitted to BGH. Apart from a dozen deaths and cases that were referred elsewhere, other patients have been cured. Currently, there are more than 30 positive patients at BGH. A plasma bank at the hospital would have been one of the biggest in the state.

A plasma bank requires a plasmapheresis machine and two freezers which cost around Rs 30 lakh. BGH’s inability to procure the machines has prompted heated debate.

Convalescent plasma therapy, involving taking blood from cured patients of the same blood group and administering it to the patient after separating the plasma, has not begun though it does not require any equipment. Those who have recovered from Covid-19 can donate plasma at BGH whenever a need arises.

Plasma therapy may be helpful in treating patients with Covid-19 who do not respond to other forms of treatment. Doctors believe that convalescent plasma can be given to people with severe symptoms to boost their ability to fight the virus. BGH doctors, however, do not find plasma therapy of much use in treating serious patients.

Other big hospitals in the state, including RIMS in Ranchi and MGM and TMH in Jamshedpur, have plasma therapy units.

In convalescent plasma therapy, there is a limitation that the blood group of the cured coronavirus positive donor and the patient to be administered the treatment should be the same, but in plasmapheresis, no particular blood group is required. “It can help in forming plasma banks,” said Dr Pathak.

There are many willing donors in the district. But BGH’s unwillingness to launch a plasma bank has baffled them. Some of the donors, including CISF personnel, have donated their plasma to needy patients at places as far away as Ranchi.

At least 3,981 people tested positive for the coronavirus till Friday morning. Of them, 453 cases are active and 30 of the patients have died.