‘Corona Warriors’ on Facebook to help Pakistanis

Lahore, 2nd July: Musician Zoraiz Riaz recently set up a Facebook group in order to help coordinate convalescent plasma donations for people fighting COVID-19 in Pakistan.

Within a month, the group has more than 320,000 members and a team of 33 volunteers to manage posts from families of patients across Pakistan seeking advice.

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Riaz, 27, told Reuters from his home in the eastern Pakistani metropolis of Lahore, which is one of the hardest-hit cities in the South Asian nation and has reported nearly 210,000 coronavirus patients and over 4,300 deaths.

Riaz further explained, ‘The rest are looking for different medical supplies, oxygen, ventilators, injections for drugs, or leads on hospitals that have availability.’

The large gap left by a disorganized healthcare system in Pakistan is highlighted by the scale of the response on this Facebook page. This goes on to show that Pakistan’s healthcare system is ill-equipped to offer systematic guidance to the patients and will not be able to cope for much longer if the numbers keep on rising.

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Plasma Rush

This week the Facebook group had the country’s top expert share advice on convalescent plasma treatment.

‘There was no clear guidance from the government, and we had to face this urgent amount of requests for plasma from almost everyone, even people whose medical consultants were not recommending it were coming to us asking for plasma,’ Riaz commented.

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Despite the limited information on the effectiveness of plasma treatment, many people are seeking it. This treatment infuses the plasma from a recovered COVID-19 patient to a recovering one as a source of antibodies.

With this treatment being widely sought for, Pakistani hematologists warned the government to provide proper guidelines, especially with the rapidly growing black market for plasma.

Health officials have finally placed national standards for plasma treatment and have warned the public against the illegal sale of plasma.

However, many families with patients in their families had reached out for guidance from the Facebook group, where volunteer physicians answered their questions about plasma and linked the recipients to plasma donors by bypassing the black market.

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Riaz explains that each request for plasma is first screened by volunteers who require medical documentation from physicians proving that the treatment is viable. Donors are also screened to ensure no one is selling the plasma.

Members of the group are also offering oxygen tanks and ventilators to hospitals, and home-cooked meals or the families of patients or those who are in quarantine.

Several people share advice on hospitals with available beds or where to find the prescribed medications which are not easily available from markets because the government has been unable to control profiteering and hoarding during the pandemic.

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‘Corona Recovered Warriors’ isn’t the only social media platform working for this cause, ‘Blood Donors Pakistan,’ which was set up in 2011 using Twitter to connect families with blood donors is also functioning and receives more than 50 requests every day.

Usama Mehmood Khan, who helps run the platform, shared with Reuters, ‘When your family is in this condition, whatever remedy (available), even if not effective, is something they try to use.’

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