The Head of Karachi’s National Institute of Blood Diseases (NIBD) Karachi, Dr. Tahir Shamsi, is in critical condition after undergoing surgery for brain hemorrhage.
According to the details, he is admitted to Aga Khan University (AKU) Hospital in Karachi.
Doctors have requested the public to pray for his recovery as he was responsible for saving the lives of thousands of COVID-19 patients in Pakistan when vaccines were non-existent.
The federal and provincial governments had allowed the use of the passive immunization technique for the treatment of critically ill coronavirus patients in the absence of effective vaccines last March last year on Dr. Shamsi’s recommendation.
Commonly known as ‘plasma therapy’, passive immunization was first introduced in 1890 and is only employed when the risk of infection is extremely high, the body’s immune response is low, and no vaccine is available.
Dr. Shamsi had argued that a COVID-19 patient creates antibodies after fighting the virus. The antibodies in the blood of a recovered patient can be used to boost the immunity of the newly-infected patients with the help of the passive immunization technique. His suggestion saved the lives of thousands of patients.
As per a report on the effectiveness of passive immunization for coronavirus patients in Pakistan that was published in September last year, 92 percent of critically ill patients were saved from being shifted to ventilators between March and September 2020 thanks to the convalescent plasma immunization therapy advocated by Dr. Shamsi.
