The Delhi High Court today has asked the Centre and Delhi Government to treat PIL as a representation which has sought directions to make plasma donation mandatory from patients who have recovered from COVID-19.
A division bench headed by the Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan asked the government to treat the petition as representation in accordance with the rules, laws and policies.
The petition was filed by Piyush Gupta through Advocate Kapil Goyal, which had sought directions to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and then National Disaster Management Authority to Constitute a statutory body to regulate the smooth availability of the plasma.
Even the Delhi Health Minister, Satyendra Jain received plasma therapy and recovered from COVID19, stated in the petition.
During the hearing today, petitioner submitted before the Court that today we have whole lot of people who have recovered. According to government its 60%. After some days of recovery they can be used to treat second stage moderate treatments of COVID. A plasma bank was recently introduced by the Chief Minister. But these can’t work like blood banks
Justice Prateek Jalan said, “can it be mandated? I’m surprised by the submission, can people be forced to donate plasma.”
The petitioner replied, and said, can’t we come up with a system under a centralised agency, if a person goes for test or treatment, he acn be asked for an undertaking that they will donate plasma after recovering.
Justice Jalan asked, so if they refuse to give undertaking, they should not be treated? Treatment cannot be made conditional like this. I understand that we should encourage people, but that is happening anyway.
The petition has claimed that black marketing of plasma has started and submitted that a genuine person who needs plasma fails to get the same without running around from one place to another and may end up losing their lives to the virus during the same.
It was stated in the plea, “It is necessary for the public at large to stop such kind of malpractice and to ensure that the plasma can be obtained from the recovered patient at the time of their discharge or to make a rule that every recovered patient have to provide plasma for the sake of treatment for others who are seriously ill.”
-India Legal Bureau