GUJRAT: Overseas Pakistanis will organise donor conferences in various European countries to raise the funding for Gujrat Kidney Centre where patients are being given free dialysis facility for the last more than two years.

This was announced by Pakistan Union Norway chairman Chaudhry Qamar Iqbal during his visit to the kidney centre along with members of his delegation from various European countries.

The delegation was briefed by Gujrat Patients’ Welfare Association president Mian Muhammad Ijaz and administrator of the centre Dr Abbas Gondal on the future requirements and plans for the uplift of the centre which was established through public-private partnership back in 2016. Local philanthropists have donated Rs200 million for the construction work, installation of machinery and running expenses on the treatment of free of cost dialysis of patients.

The management told the delegation that the kidney centre needed more funding to meet the monthly expenses of Rs6 million on the dialysis of at least 75 patients on a daily basis in three shifts. The monthly expenses had been increased due to the recently installed seven more dialysis machines two weeks ago.

Mr Ijaz said that earlier 50 to 55 patients had been getting dialysis facility on 23 machines daily at a monthly cost of Rs4.2 million which would now increase up to Rs5.5 million to 6 million approximately due to the addition of more machines.

He said the funding had purely been generated through the local resources so far but now with the increasing pressure of patients and expenditure, the centre needed support of expatriate community mainly belonging to Gujrat.

Mr Iqbal, the head of the visiting delegation, expressed his satisfaction over the overall working and performance of the kidney centre in the service delivery to the poor and needy patients and vowed to organise fund-raising events in various European countries including the Norwegian capital Oslo where a large number of expatriates were from Kharian and Gujrat.

He said the management of the kidney centre would be invited to Norway after he would constitute a coordination group of overseas Pakistanis in different countries.

Jamaat-i-Islami Punjab Emir Dr Tariq Saleem also visited the kidney centre and announced that he would arrange financial assistance as well as technical support of Alkhidmat Foundation for the facility.

Published in Dawn, February 23rd, 2019