PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has allowed use of plasma extracted from the blood of patients having fully recovered from Covid-19 for the treatment of the fresh cases.

A notification issued from the office of secretary health on Sunday said the Provincial Passive Immunisation Committee proposed by the Hayatabad Medical Complex and comprising health experts and professionals had been given a go-ahead to submit a detailed proposal on the subject for onward submission to the National Bioethics Committee for approval.

On March 28, the Hayatabad Medical Complex’s medical director Prof Shehzad Akbar Khan had requested the health secretary to constitute a committee in accordance with a proposal made by Prof Tahir Shamsi, chairman of the National Passive Immunisation Committee, which had also been approved the US Food and Drug Administration, to treat the fresh patients with plasma extracted from the blood of patients having fully recovered from the disease.

On Friday, the National Bioethics Committee had approved passive immunisation trial by the HMC but waited for the provincial government’s formal approval of the committee to start treatment of coronavirus patients by plasma.

Meanwhile, health minister Taimur Khan Jhagra in a tweet said the committee had been notified to look at and expedite work on passive immunisation.

Published in Dawn, April 6th, 2020