In my view

A few weeks ago, I posted a column about the new COVID-19 virus and in that column, I made a comparison about the number of people affected by the flu. I should not have done that. It was a true mischaracterization of a serious infection that should not be downplayed at all. After reading an excellent article called Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance, I changed my mind and realized that we…

Do we have to worry about the new coronavirus? We all have seen the news after the Wuhan coronavirus was discovered and started to spread around the world. It will not take long before we will see very interesting scientific and epidemiological articles about this virus. For me it is another manifestation of a global world. National or territorial thinking will not contain or control them. Be…

Inventory Management Is building inventory a good strategy or just selfish? Around the year 2000, the world was still experiencing a shortage of immunoglobulin therapies that caused all kind of concerns for the patients in need of this therapy. Then the production of recombinant FVIII was reduces, causing a worldwide shortage of rFVIII. Patients needed to be switched to plasma derived therapies…

Latin America needs more plasma The Latin American Society for Immune Deficiency (LASID) held its bi-annual meeting in Cancun in October 2019. It was a very impressive meeting that started in its opening session with a short video of patient testimonials. I was not aware that in Mexico, children with primary immune deficiency only receive treatment with immune globulins until they are 5 years…

Donor incentives Recently I was in a meeting with executives from US Blood Banks to talk about ways to incentivize donors. In the plasma industry the incentives are monetary, in Blood Banks it is mostly in the from of gifts like mugs, T-shirts, pins and other gifts. The reason for the meeting was that there is increasing discussion in the blood community whether the blood banks can sustain with…