Doctors, Community in Texas Seeking Help for Indian Americans Testing Positive for COVID-19

[keenguy]

An entire Indian American family of five in Texas has tested positive for COVID-19, and now they are seeking help from the community, hoping to find anyone who has recovered from a positive test to provide insights.

Rohan Bavadekar, a 42-year-old from Houston, is fighting for his life on a ventilator in St. Luke's hospital after being diagnosed with COVID-19, according to a Free Press Journal report.

Meanwhile, at his home, his wife Manasi and three young children, who wait for his return, have also contracted the virus.

 

Also diagnosed with coronavirus is physician Lavanga Veluswamy, according to a republicworld.com report, which added that Veluswamy’s wife Rama, herself a physician, has urgently appealed for the blood group A or AB. The doctor couple have been long time residents of Houston, before moving to Beaumont, in Texas.
 

A third COVID-19 patient has preferred to stay anonymous and is waiting for the plasma transfusion at Memorial Hermann hospital in Houston, said the report.

According to doctors at the St Lukes and Memorial Hermann, who are treating them, "the best match in such circumstances would be someone who has recovered from COVID-19 in the past two weeks and is now healthy.”

Hoping for a miracle and supporting the Bavadekar family during these difficult times is SEWA, an Indian American group based in Texas, which is lending a helping hand.

"Sewa is providing non-medical service and support to Rohan's family by providing prepared food, groceries, medicines and emotional support," Gitesh Desai, president of the SEWA Houston chapter, said in the Free Press Journal report.

 

The task for Manasi and everyone helping Rohan is trying to find someone who has recovered from COVID-19.

The Food and Drug Administration is allowing doctors in the United States to use plasma, the yellow fluid in which blood cells are suspended, to treat very ill COVID-19 patients, according to the report.

Rohan's doctors plan to use plasma from survivors, also known as convalescent-plasma therapy, it said.

People who have recovered from the disease have antibodies that might help those still suffering from it. Dating back to the late 19th century, doctors have transfused the blood of recovered patients into those still sick with the 1918 flu, measles, polio, chickenpox, SARS, and Ebola – to varying degrees of success, the report added.

Dr. Jim Musser is part of the consortium of researchers across the country working on the treatment that introduces the plasma of healed COVID-19 patients into those still fighting it. One person's antibodies is doing the work for another, according to the Houston-based media outlet.

“Because it's a small number of patients, we're in a watchful waiting period. And I stress that this is very much an experimental investigative protocol that we're using here," Musser told ABC13 in Houston. "Our donors were proven to be COVID-19 cases. They have recovered. And now they are at least two weeks down the road healthy, feeling fine, asymptomatic. They are free of infection and so forth."

The patients’ friends are reaching out on social media looking for potential donors who they will then connect with hospitals.

Anyone who wishes to help can call SEWA's non-medical helpline at (281) 909-SEWA for the Midwest; (708) 872-SEWA and (302) 330-SEWA for the Northeast; and (203) 872-SEWA for the western United States.