KARACHI, Dec 24: The Patients’ Welfare Association, the largest NGO in the country run by students, plans to expand the services it provides to ailing Karachiites.

Next year it will expand and renovate its blood bank. It also plans to set up a thalassaemia follow-up clinic.

This was stated by the PWA’s office-bearers at its annual general body meeting on Tuesday. During the meeting they presented the audit report and also the annual report.

In their presentation the PWA’s office-bearers said after the proposed expansion, the total covered area in the blood bank would jump from 1,700 to 2,700 square feet.

The services provided by the blood bank — recognized by the WHO as Pakistan’s largest — would improve correspondingly, they said.

Last year the PWA had got its drug bank building reconstructed, said the PWA’s volunteers. Because of the additional space now available, the drug bank was able to hold more medicines and in an organized fashion.

They claimed a new blood fractionating unit had been built which had replaced the old one. A new cryofuge was also acquired. And like the drug bank, the diagnostic laboratory was reconstructed and TB clinic separated from laboratory.

Students running the PWA, the only welfare organization providing free service to the needy patients at the Civil Hospital, said last year more than 52,000 bags, or pints, of blood were distributed to poor patients. In lieu of these bags, the recipients’ family-members donated blood, allowing the continuation of this service.

More than 4.4 million doses of medicines and injections were also distributed to needy people. About 19,000 patients had benefited from this service, they said.

The PWA’s diagnostic laboratory has so far performed more than 95,000 tests, said the students. The facilities under the programme are being constantly improved with the addition of new equipment.

Under its tuberculosis programme, 200 patients remained registered throughout the year, said the PWA’s office-bearers. Once a patient checked out of this list the name of a new one was added.

Similarly, about 150 patients remained registered with the PWA’s thalassaemia programme. Besides routine examinations, the patients regularly got screened blood as well as the needed medication, according to the PWA’s volunteers.

The PWA had raised a total of Rs16.5 million during the last financial year, ending in June. As the organization is a non-profit one, an equal amount was spent on expenditure.

The volunteers said the PWA, set up in 1979, represented the first organized effort to combat the practice of professional blood donation. The welfare body, in addition to providing valuable service to the needy patients, imbibed a spirit of selflessness and devotion in junior doctors and medical students.

All those present at the meeting, including the chief guest, Fatima Surayya Bajia, praised the PWA’s initiatives. They said so long as some people were prepared to provide material and moral support to the needy, the Pakistani society could hope for a better tomorrow.

Later, the chief guest — with special guests Tariq Shafi, Athar Ahmed, Prof Tipu Sultan and Prof Noshad A. Sheikh — unveiled the haemotological analyser, which has been newly acquired. This machine gives a complete blood picture.

On the occasion, plaques were also presented to the PWA’s four life members and four honorary members.