The COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc around the world with more than 12.7 million cases and increasing. While multiple options are being tried to fight the coronavirus, transfusions with convalescent plasma, one of the traditional methods used to fight infectious diseases, has emerged as one of the effective methods to treat COVID-19 patients. With that said, the success of convalescent plasma therapy is yet to scale heights as there is a dearth of plasma donors willing to donate.
To address the issue and make life easier for patients in need of plasma therapy, Pint (Plasma In Need For Transfusion) Network, one of its kind start-up in the medical field, has come up with an online plasma matching platform which facilitates patients in need of convalescent plasma to find and match with donors, quicker and more efficiently.
The Pint Network is a first self-funded digital initiative of 22-year-old Karina Thakrar and 23-year-old Doctor Neil Pinto. While Thakrar is a graduate in Economics and Sociology from the Loyola Marymount University, Dr Pinto is a graduate from Sion Hospital in Mumbai.
Working on an algorithm of matchmaking, Pint Network, from across India, matches donors with patients based on their blood donation and convalescent plasma donation criteria.
"We have been receiving a lot of calls and forwards from families of patients in critical condition in need of plasma. It was taking days for families to find a single donor and by the time they did, the patient’s condition had already worsened. We wanted to speed up this process in any way we could and building this platform seemed like the best solution within the confines of a lockdown," said Dr Pinto.
Launched on July 6, this online plasma matching platform has been able to register over 50 donors and COVID-19 patients on its website within a week. It is also in talks with two hospitals at present in order to promote the initiative and reach out to maximum possible donors and patients in need.
“We are collaborating with hospitals across India to increase awareness about the convalescent plasma therapy, especially in the top eight cities where the spread of the virus is maximum,” said Dr Pinto.
Thakrar said that as Pint is a non-profit initiative, it aims at being the facilitator in making resources easily available for the patients battling the disease. “If tomorrow the patient requires plasma therapy, we want to be able to find him a donor at the click of a button. Having said that, it is important that people who have recovered to fight the fear and stigma built around plasma donation and in turn become warriors by helping other patients recover," she added.
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