<p>Mohamed Fathi, an Egyptian man who has recovered from Covid-19, winced as he watched tubes running down his arm to donate blood plasma, but insisted: "if I can help just one person, that's a very good thing".</p>.<p>The 25-year-old land surveyor from Cairo caught the disease in May, on the eve of the Muslim Eid al-Fitr festival, becoming one of the almost 100,000 reported cases in Egypt, where more than 5,000 people have died of the novel coronavirus.</p>.<p>"Losing the sense of taste was a terrible experience," he told AFP at Egypt's National Blood Transfusion headquarters in Cairo, describing just one of his symptoms. "You feel like you're eating for the sake of it."</p>.<p>Things got worse for the family when his elderly father was also infected, making Egypt's blistering hot summer months a hellish period of fretting over his recovery from a loud, dry cough and constant fevers.</p>.<p><a href="https://www.deccanherald.com/national/coronavirus-news-live-updates-india-world-coronavirus-vaccine-karnataka-maharashtra-tamil-nadu-delhi-kerala-gujarat-west-bengal-bangalore-mumbai-new-delhi-chennai-kolkata-cases-deaths-recoveries-876781.html" target="_blank"><strong>For latest updates on Coronavirus outbreak, click here</strong></a></p>.<p>"I came to donate today because I didn't want someone else to go through what I and my family went through," said the softly spoken young man, one of about 200 volunteers who had so far taken part in the budding project.</p>.<p>Egypt, like the United States and a handful of other countries, is trying to fight the pandemic in part by using convalescent plasma, the watery fluid in the blood of recovered patients that is teeming with antibodies.</p>.<p>After US President Donald Trump touted it as a temporary cure, his administration issued an emergency authorisation last month to use plasma from recovered Covid-19 patients.</p>.<p>The idea is to harvest the plasma and inject it into other patients to give them an immunological boost that helps fight the same infection.</p>.<p>The scientific community is divided on using plasma to treat Covid-19, but proponents say the technique has proven effective in small studies to treat other infectious diseases, including Ebola and SARS.</p>.<p>Nascent clinical plasma trials to fight the new pandemic have also been launched in Bolivia, Britain, Colombia, India, Mexico, Pakistan and South Korea.</p>.<p>Ihab Serageldin, director of Egypt's National Blood Transfusion Centre, said he believes convalescent plasma is a promising treatment while the race continues to develop, mass-produce and distribute an effective vaccine.</p>.<p>Since April he has spearheaded Egypt's campaign urging the country's more than 78,000 known recovered patients to donate their plasma.</p>.<p>"Coronavirus is one of these viruses that doesn't have a manual ... we're combatting an unknown enemy, so any form of treatment that offers a glimmer of hope we need to hold onto," he told AFP.</p>.<p>"If the US didn't find it promising then it wouldn't have launched a national campaign urging recovered virus patients to donate their plasma," he said.</p>.<p>Serageldin said in Egypt eligible donors must be aged 18 to 60, weigh at least 50 kilogrammes (110 pounds) and have produced a certain quality of antibodies.</p>.<p>Over 200 people have so far donated plasma, each providing 800 ml of the fluid split into four bags, which are given to two patients at a time.</p>.<p>Serageldin said there was no data yet on the success rate of Egypt's plasma project.</p>.<p>Many more donations are needed, he said, stressing that "blood donations in general are low in Egypt, so we're working on raising awareness among the general public."</p>.<p>The meagre numbers of donors prompted advertising executive Ahmed Mostafa, 37, to create an app called Mosanda ("Support") to connect recovered patients with those infected.</p>.<p>Mostafa had a strong motivation -- he had also caught the disease in late May.</p>.<p>"After a month of exhaustion from the virus, I wanted to contribute to making other patients' lives better," he said.</p>.<p>He teamed up with a web developer and medical doctors to design the easy-to-use Android app, which was released in June.</p>.<p>"We want to be the link between patients, but the response has been very slow," he said.</p>.<p>With the minimal uptake online, he is planning to expand his app to make it a general blood donation service, meeting another pressing need in Egypt's strained healthcare sector.</p>.<p>Mostafa also sees the app, and a regulated, centralised plasma project, as a safe alternative to an emerging black market.</p>.<p>In June, local media reported that plasma bags from recovered patients were being informally traded for over 20,000 Egyptian pounds ($1,200) each.</p>.<p>While one parliamentarian called for criminalising the practice, Egypt's foremost Muslim institution Al-Azhar ruled that it was not permissible under Islamic law to trade plasma informally and lambasted those "profiting from the pandemic".</p>
<p>Mohamed Fathi, an Egyptian man who has recovered from Covid-19, winced as he watched tubes running down his arm to donate blood plasma, but insisted: "if I can help just one person, that's a very good thing".</p>.<p>The 25-year-old land surveyor from Cairo caught the disease in May, on the eve of the Muslim Eid al-Fitr festival, becoming one of the almost 100,000 reported cases in Egypt, where more than 5,000 people have died of the novel coronavirus.</p>.<p>"Losing the sense of taste was a terrible experience," he told AFP at Egypt's National Blood Transfusion headquarters in Cairo, describing just one of his symptoms. "You feel like you're eating for the sake of it."</p>.<p>Things got worse for the family when his elderly father was also infected, making Egypt's blistering hot summer months a hellish period of fretting over his recovery from a loud, dry cough and constant fevers.</p>.<p><a href="https://www.deccanherald.com/national/coronavirus-news-live-updates-india-world-coronavirus-vaccine-karnataka-maharashtra-tamil-nadu-delhi-kerala-gujarat-west-bengal-bangalore-mumbai-new-delhi-chennai-kolkata-cases-deaths-recoveries-876781.html" target="_blank"><strong>For latest updates on Coronavirus outbreak, click here</strong></a></p>.<p>"I came to donate today because I didn't want someone else to go through what I and my family went through," said the softly spoken young man, one of about 200 volunteers who had so far taken part in the budding project.</p>.<p>Egypt, like the United States and a handful of other countries, is trying to fight the pandemic in part by using convalescent plasma, the watery fluid in the blood of recovered patients that is teeming with antibodies.</p>.<p>After US President Donald Trump touted it as a temporary cure, his administration issued an emergency authorisation last month to use plasma from recovered Covid-19 patients.</p>.<p>The idea is to harvest the plasma and inject it into other patients to give them an immunological boost that helps fight the same infection.</p>.<p>The scientific community is divided on using plasma to treat Covid-19, but proponents say the technique has proven effective in small studies to treat other infectious diseases, including Ebola and SARS.</p>.<p>Nascent clinical plasma trials to fight the new pandemic have also been launched in Bolivia, Britain, Colombia, India, Mexico, Pakistan and South Korea.</p>.<p>Ihab Serageldin, director of Egypt's National Blood Transfusion Centre, said he believes convalescent plasma is a promising treatment while the race continues to develop, mass-produce and distribute an effective vaccine.</p>.<p>Since April he has spearheaded Egypt's campaign urging the country's more than 78,000 known recovered patients to donate their plasma.</p>.<p>"Coronavirus is one of these viruses that doesn't have a manual ... we're combatting an unknown enemy, so any form of treatment that offers a glimmer of hope we need to hold onto," he told AFP.</p>.<p>"If the US didn't find it promising then it wouldn't have launched a national campaign urging recovered virus patients to donate their plasma," he said.</p>.<p>Serageldin said in Egypt eligible donors must be aged 18 to 60, weigh at least 50 kilogrammes (110 pounds) and have produced a certain quality of antibodies.</p>.<p>Over 200 people have so far donated plasma, each providing 800 ml of the fluid split into four bags, which are given to two patients at a time.</p>.<p>Serageldin said there was no data yet on the success rate of Egypt's plasma project.</p>.<p>Many more donations are needed, he said, stressing that "blood donations in general are low in Egypt, so we're working on raising awareness among the general public."</p>.<p>The meagre numbers of donors prompted advertising executive Ahmed Mostafa, 37, to create an app called Mosanda ("Support") to connect recovered patients with those infected.</p>.<p>Mostafa had a strong motivation -- he had also caught the disease in late May.</p>.<p>"After a month of exhaustion from the virus, I wanted to contribute to making other patients' lives better," he said.</p>.<p>He teamed up with a web developer and medical doctors to design the easy-to-use Android app, which was released in June.</p>.<p>"We want to be the link between patients, but the response has been very slow," he said.</p>.<p>With the minimal uptake online, he is planning to expand his app to make it a general blood donation service, meeting another pressing need in Egypt's strained healthcare sector.</p>.<p>Mostafa also sees the app, and a regulated, centralised plasma project, as a safe alternative to an emerging black market.</p>.<p>In June, local media reported that plasma bags from recovered patients were being informally traded for over 20,000 Egyptian pounds ($1,200) each.</p>.<p>While one parliamentarian called for criminalising the practice, Egypt's foremost Muslim institution Al-Azhar ruled that it was not permissible under Islamic law to trade plasma informally and lambasted those "profiting from the pandemic".</p>