The biomedical engineer Mr. Shahid Khan and his staff has come to the Telha Foundation Dialysis Center earlier this month (video embedded below!) to test our fourteen dialysis machines and our reverse-osmosis water filtering plant. The machines are ready for operation, building construction has completed and now we are only waiting for reliable electricity to proceed. We intend to rent a small generator so that we can begin operations by the end of this month using only a limited number of machines.
Given the high electrical demand of the machines (around 2 kW each) and reverse osmosis system (around 5 kW while running), we need a powerful generator to run the dialysis center. The electrical connection from the local grid is highly unreliable and can only provide power for a short and unpredictable period of time. For this reason we are in the process of purchasing a 60 kW generator (plus an additional generator for resiliency purposes) and an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) that can handle the time between the loss of grid power and switch to local generator power that can occur multiple times per day. This system, once installed, will allow us to serve the full dialysis center without interruption over the course of a day. We are additionally working on acquiring heating and air-conditioning units to keep the building climate controlled.
We will purchase the generators and climate-control units as soon as we are able to obtain the funds from the local bank in Pakistan. Our November fundraising events and activities in greater Philadelphia and Chicago have enabled us to transfer enough money to Pakistan to purchase the needed equipment and pay much of the necessary contractor bill for work already performed on the building. These funds could not have been raised without the generosity of many donors in different parts of the United States. For this we thank our donors and work to be honest stewards of the money that has been entrusted to us. Unfortunately - and despite many past successful transfers - this money is being held up by the bank in Pakistan. This money is not being seized or anything like that - it is just being held while the bank demands new forms from the government. We are working with both local and federal government in Pakistan to get this money released, but these processes do not move as quickly as we would like. In the meantime, we will continue our progress and will rent a generator on credit if needed to begin operating the dialysis center ASAP.
Please see below video showing images of the biomedical engineer and his team evaluating and calibrating our dialysis machines.