Bound by blood, working on plasma: 2 sisters create info bank on Instagram

It is their Instagram page ‘plasmadonors Chandigarh’ through which the donor as well as the receiver are put in touch with each other. There is a simple form available on their page, which may be used to fill out the information after which they get in touch with the recipient.

The page was started by Vibhusha, a teacher at a private school of Chandigarh, in the second week of April after she had recovered from Covid-19 herself.

“I wanted to donate plasma since I had recently recovered but found there was no streamlined process to do it. I started researching on it and found an Instagram page of plasma donors for Delhi which made me realise that we must have one for Chandigarh too,” Vibhusha recounts.

While it was a slow start, “we started tagging influencers like MissMalini et al who were working in the direction of spreading awareness related to Covid. One of them shared our page and we started to grow,” says Isha, who is a software engineer and has been working from home on night shifts since the advent of the pandemic.

She adds, “We realised that the page grew as the demand grew for plasma therapy. People had been looking for something like this.”

The duo’s first exchange of plasma between a donor and a recipient happened last week. “It was a very positive feeling, having helped someone in their need of hour,” Isha says.

While the duo’s donor list currently runs in surplus, they say “we are going to need all of it. Grim days are yet to come”. They are steadily working on creating a list of donors from all blood groups.