A blood donation camp will be held with Covid-19 survivors in New Town on Sunday morning. Organised by New Town Forum & News (NTFN), a local social welfare organisation, and Cenergy, another non-governmental organisation, it will be held at the CB Block community hall. Organisers claim this will be the first such camp outside a hospital in the state which is aimed to help with plasma collection for Covid-19 treatment and research.

“We were receiving many requests for plasma donors from friends and relatives of Covid-19 patients. That made us think of holding such a camp. In the meantime, the health department issued an order on August 24 to set up convalescent Covid-19 plasma banks in 20 state-run hospitals. That order also allowed collection from voluntary blood donation camps. So we sought permission from the New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA),” said Samaresh Das, president of NTFN. The State Blood Transmission Control and the blood transfusion cell of the National Health Mission were then approached.
The organisers are contacting residents who have recovered from Covid-19 sufficiently early. “We are taking the cut-off date for eligibility to be 38 days from the day of the report coming positive. The other criterion is 28 days after the report coming negative. But now many are not going for a test after they recover,” Das added.

Arindam Dutta Chowdhury, who has been a moving force behind the series of blood donation camps organised during the lockdown by the forum across New Town, explained that though the target is plasma collection, the team coming from SSKM Hospital will collect whole blood. “That way the other components can be put to other use, especially platelets which are needed for treatment of dengue, which is also being reported,” he added.