Nachum Segal interviewed Mordy Serle, Co-Founder of the COVID Plasma Initiative about their work in the fight against Covid-19.

From the CPI’s website:

We are a non-profit initiative, serving as the central node of a network that makes the connection between patients and their families, plasma donors, and hospitals or physicians. Our mission is to make convalescent COVID-19 plasma accessible to as many COVID-19 patients as possible.​

How it Began

In early April 2020, Abba Swiatycki and Mordechai Serle fatefully crossed paths. They were each searching for treatments for acutely ill family members who were fighting for their lives in intensive care units. They were told, independently, that convalescent COVID-19 plasma transfusions could help their relatives in theory, but that the plasma simply wasn’t available in their hospitals. Mordechai and Abba initiated a campaign to recruit plasma donors, teaming up with Chaim Lebovits, a longtime volunteer patient advocate who had already been independently recruiting donors for a different hospital. Their collective efforts quickly grew into what is now the Covid Plasma Initiative Foundation.

Barely weeks-old, this initiative has changed the face of COVID-19 treatment in the USA, starting in the Northeast and now spreading beyond. Starting as a grassroots effort, with the help of dozens of dedicated volunteers – from project managers to software developers – as well as non-profit organizations and hospitals, they launched a robust blood plasma donor network that has recruited several thousands of potential donors to date, and is rapidly growing.