Abstract：
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic confronted medicine with several difficulties, including a lack of specific therapeutic options, the absence of out-of-hospital testing facilities to diagnose the condition, and the sudden extraordinary need for intensive medical care that overwhelmed most hospitals. Early in the pandemic, many physicians recognized that using antibodies harvested from recovering patients was a treatment that had a proven track record for many diseases and that might be used to manage the disease at least as a stopgap until more specific medicines for COVID-19 were developed. But using convalescent plasma raised many additional complications, most especially the logistics that needed to be put in place to collect and distribute such plasma. Unlike drugs ordered from a pharmacy, plasma and other blood products are procured by a complex process that depends intensely on interaction with the public, the provider of all blood products that are directly provided to patients. Blood components such as convalescent plasma, intended to be used immediately without major processing, are entirely supplied by donations from the public. This form of treatment can therefore benefit from patient advocates, especially if they are experienced in solving problems of logistics and in the process of matching supply to demand that is more commonly encountered in the business world than in medicine. In this chapter, one patient advocate, Chaim Lebovits, describes the process of mobilizing the population, interacting with blood banks and hospitals, and successfully channeling thousands of units of plasma from volunteers recovering from COVID-19 to patients in hospitals. Starting in New York City in early 2020 and initially working with communities with which Mr. Lebovits was familiar, the efforts steadily spread across many parts of the US. The model described here, which uses patient advocates to serve as a link between patients, blood banks, and hospitals in the service of gathering and distributing high-titer convalescent plasma to patients is likely to be relevant to the next pandemic.
摘要：
COVID-19大流行的爆发给医学带来了几个困难，包括缺乏特定的治疗选择，没有院外检测设施来诊断病情，以及对重症监护的突然非凡需求，使大多数医院不堪重负。在大流行的早期，许多医生认识到,使用从康复患者中收集的抗体是一种对许多疾病都有良好记录的治疗方法,在开发出更多针对COVID-19的特异性药物之前,至少可以作为权宜之计来控制疾病.但是使用恢复期血浆会增加许多额外的并发症，最特别的是需要到位的物流，以收集和分配这种血浆。不像从药房订购的药物，血浆和其他血液制品是通过一个复杂的过程采购的，这在很大程度上取决于与公众的互动，直接提供给患者的所有血液制品的提供者。血液成分，如恢复期血浆，打算在不进行重大处理的情况下立即使用，完全由公众的捐赠提供。因此，这种形式的治疗可以受益于患者的倡导者，特别是如果他们在解决物流问题和匹配供应的过程中，在商业世界比医药更常见的经验。在这一章中,一位患者倡导者，ChaimLebovits,描述了动员人口的过程，与血库和医院互动，并成功地将从COVID-19中康复的志愿者的数千单位血浆输送给医院的患者。从2020年初在纽约市开始，最初与Lebovits先生熟悉的社区合作，这些努力稳步蔓延到美国许多地区。这里描述的模型，它使用患者倡导者作为患者之间的纽带，血库,为患者收集和分发高滴度康复血浆服务的医院可能与下一次大流行有关。
