Turkish health care professionals are planning to trial a treatment against COVID-19 that will involve blood transfusions from those who have recovered from the disease to patients still displaying symptoms, Turkish Red Crescent Society President Kerem Kinik said on Friday
ANKARA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 03rd April, 2020) Turkish health care professionals are planning to trial a treatment against COVID-19 that will involve blood transfusions from those who have recovered from the disease to patients still displaying symptoms, Turkish Red Crescent Society President Kerem Kinik said on Friday.
"Next week, we are starting a new method of treatment. It is necessary that 14 days have passed since the patient infected with the coronavirus disease has recovered and has been discharged from hospital. Due to the lack of a vaccine against the disease, we are forced to use this method ... I believe that it will become one of the most effective methods in the world," Kinik was quoted by the Turkish state-run TRT broadcaster as saying.
Kinik stated that the blood, and in particular the plasma, of recovered patients, contains antibodies that can be transfused to other patients who have contracted the disease.
Medical professionals in the Philippines are also beginning to trial a similar treatment, as the Philippine General Hospital in Manila has issued a call for blood donations from those who have recovered from the disease, the country's ABS-CBN broadcaster reported on Friday.
This procedure was previously used in China in February, and according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on March 27, five critically ill patients in the Chinese city of Shenzhen who had tested positive for COVID-19 showed improvements after receiving donated blood from survivors of the disease.
Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced on Thursday that 2,456 new cases of COVID-19 have been reported, raising the total number of positive tests in the country since the start of the outbreak to 18,135. The death toll in Turkey currently stands at 356.
