Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Mr G. Kishan Reddy Inaugurated Telugu States’ first Rotary Plasma Bank “The Rotary Plasma Bank” today in the city

Hyderabad, August 23, 2020….The only hope to Corona until Vaccine introduced is Plasma Therapy. Making that easy is Plasma Bank.

Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Mr G. Kishan Reddy Inaugurated Telugu States’ first Rotary Plasma Bank “The Rotary Plasma Bank” here in the city today at Challa Blood Bank.

It is the initiative of Rotary Club of Hyderabad Deccan.

The plasma bank is the need of the hour of treatment for Covid-19 shared VVSN Raju, President of the Rotary Club of Hyderabad Deccan while welcoming the gathering and the media at the launch press conference held at Hotel Paryatak Bhavan after its inauguration earlier in the morning. He outlined the earlier work of the Club in setting up dialysis centres and cancer treatment facilities in recent times

Addressing the press Rtn Sharath Choudary, Chairman of the Rotary Challa Blood Bank said “Our journey of Plasma Bank started when young engineering graduates of Manipal approached us to have a website to promote plasma donation. Then our spouses got involve to match with hospitals, patients, donors etc. We also observed that we must make plasma donation easy and cumbersome as not many donors were venturing out for many reasons some of which include safety, privacy etc.

Many doctors and hospitals have been prescribing plasma rich in antibodies. The patients and doctors are under stress as the number of patients far outnumber the number of donors coming forward to donate plasma. Donors’ fear of loss of privacy, re-infection and the long waiting at Hospitals make them reluctant to come forward to donate. To ensure that the need in society for COVID Convalescent Plasma is met, Rotary Club of Hyderabad Deccan is launching the plasma bank initiative at the Rotary Challa Blood Bank.

The initiative requires patients and donors to register at the www.plasmaforyou.org platform. The Donors will be pre-screened for antibodies and other blood parameters from samples collected at home by our technicians, and eligible donors are then requested to come to the blood bank or transport to the blood bank at a designated time thus eliminating the worries of re-infection and the discomfort of waiting at Hospitals. The process takes just 15 minutes.

The plasma is made available for patients for Rs 10,500/-, for patients in private hospitals who can afford it. This is just the cost of extraction of plasma from a donor. In the case of poor, we will even provide free of cost-shared Sharath Choudhary.

Rotary District Governor NV Hanmanth Reddy informed that the Plasma Bank was set up on the lines of one in Delhi and Noida, will fulfil the needs of people in Telugu states in these difficult times.

Rotary plasma bank is the initiative of the Rotary Challa Blood Bank to cater to the requirement for COVID Convalescent Plasma being prescribed by many doctors as a line of treatment for patients suffering severe symptoms of COVID SARS II, he added.

Addressing the media at the launch press conference, Mr G. Kishan Reddy, Honourable Minister of State for Home Affairs, Government of India expresses his happiness for inaugurating Telugu States’ First Rotary Plasma Bank. He thanked Rotary on behalf of the people of this country at large and Union Government in particular.

Carelessness may prove dearly and may cost lives. He gave a clarion call “your careless is your punishment and your alertness is your protection (“మీ నిర్లక్షమే మీకు శిక్ష . మన జాగ్రత్తే మనకు శ్రీ రామ రక్ష”.)

August 22nd was the very significant day in the country as a record number of 10,25,000 tests were done on a single day. It is the record by far but it must go up and the need is more.

Mr Reddy suggested that no one should compromise on doing tests and the number must be constantly increased.

Prime Minister has been constantly speaking CMs and all others to contain the spread of the virus. Delhi being a UT on which Union Home Ministry has administrative control. Because of which the control of the spread of the virus is effectively managed in Delhi and it is standing tall as a model state in managing the virus spread. Today it has 25,000 empty beds.

Whenever I inaugurate any hospital I always wish that no one needs it, Minister shared Union Home Ministry is the nodal Agency in looking into Corona and its related issues. Corona is becoming uncontrollable in five states which have to Improve their testing and Telangana is one amongst them, the Union Minister of State for Home Affairs informed.

Telangana is lagging behind other states in terms of testing. When we see the data of 36 cities/regions across the country, Telangana stands poorly 7th position from the bottom

The Central Government is helping Telangana in every possible way. We have so far supplied 14 lakh N-95 masks; 2,35,000 PPE Kits, 42,50,000 HCQ Tablets and 1400 ventilators to Telangana. If need be we will extend more help. We have approved 16 Govt and 24 private labs.

Central Experts teams visited the Telangana thrice and have been continuously monitoring the situation and giving necessary suggestions to the state government.

Minister gave a comparative performance to the USA in managing the COVID in the country. The USA has 17,498 COVID cases for every one million of their population and India has 2.156. Even if you see deaths we have 40 as against their 545 deaths, he shared.

Union Government has given free hands to the state. On Union Governments front, several of our facilities such as Railway, ESI are converted into COVID hospitals he shared.

He dismissed news reports purporting Governor criticising the state government. Governor is the constitutional head of the state. She also being doctor herself it was her concern and she made few observations and suggestions. It doesn’t tantamount to criticising. She has every authority to do so, he said and maintained that the relationship with the state government is cordial and reciprocal.

Minister lauded the efforts of the Rotary organisation and urged them to spread their service range a bit more to serve more needy people.

The success of the plasma bank initiative will be the participation of donors in this endeavour of Rotary to create a hassle-free and safe donation experience Rotarians by registering and to move from a COVID Survivor to be a COVID Saviour.

Rotary Challa Blood Bank is a not for profit blood bank with component separation, apheresis and plasmapheresis facilities. The Blood Bank Bank has been by the Rotary Club of Hyderabad Deccan set up to encourage voluntary blood donation in society and to provide blood products on a free of charge basis to poor patients in government hospitals, Thalassaemics, and other people who cannot afford blood products whilst maintaining the sustainability of the blood bank.

The bank has processed and delivered over 40000 units of blood products in the last 5 years.