Through the donation of her blood plasma last Saturday, Iliana Pérez Pérez joined those who, after succeeding in their battle against the new coronavirus, now contribute saving patients in serious condition still afflicted with COVID-19.
Las Tunas, Cuba.- "My disposition goes because I know that this is to cooperate with the health of the people," she said. A neighbor of the rural community of Guayacán, located north of the municipality of “Jesús Menéndez,” Iliana was last March the first confirmed positive case for SARS-CoV-2 in this eastern Cuban province. She was discharged on April 6; after remaining in isolation for another 14 days and after a new real-time PCR examination, her full recovery was finally established.
Without thinking twice, she was willing to go to the Holguín Blood Bank to donate her plasma. “It is very personal satisfaction and I think that all of us who have been with this disease and can cooperate do not hesitate to do so, because this way we help others. For my part, I will continue to return to Holguín for three more Saturdays, to extend my arm in favor of others,” she told the local press.
Dr. Ulises Cruz Cintra, first degree specialist in Hematology at the Blood Bank of the City of Parks, explained that "through blood transfusions to those infected, we introduce antibodies and thus provoke passive immunity in individuals that allow them to fight the new coronavirus." In Holguín, positive patients from that territory are being treated, as well as those from Las Tunas.
Some 17 automated plasmaphereses such as that of Iliana have already been carried out in several Cuban provinces, Dr. Francisco Durán García, director of Epidemiology at the Ministry of Health, said during the daily briefing to update the situation of the COVID-19 in Cuba. Analogous practices are not a new experience in the face of highly lethal conditions such as this, since he expressed, "for the treatment of Ebola, the hyperimmune serum obtained from patients who had overcome this disease was also used."
(With information from Raúl Rodríguez Peña and Ahora newspaper).
