GUJRAT: A donors conference for raising funds for the kidney center here will be held in Norwegian capital Oslo on August 25.

It has been organised by overseas Pakistanis settled in the Scandinavian region. A delegation of local philanthropists led by Mian Muhammad Ijaz will leave for Oslo on 23rd.

The decision to hold such a conference in various European countries had been made in February last when a delegation of overseas Pakistanis led by Chaudhry Qamar Iqbal, chairman of Pakistan Union Norway, visited the kidney center and offered to organise the event in Oslo.

The center was established in 2016 as a public-private partnership welfare project where poor and needy patients are offered free dialysis.

Local philanthropists have so far donated Rs200 million for the construction work -- installation of machinery and running expenses on dialysis.

Mian Muhammad Ijaz, the president of Gujrat Patients Welfare Association, told Dawn that the centre needed more funding to meet the monthly expenses of around Rs 6.5 million on the dialysis of at least 75 patients on a daily basis in three shifts. The monthly expenses had increased due to installation of 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 had now risen up to Rs5.5 million to 6 million approximately.

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

Published in Dawn, August 21st, 2019