January 26th is Republic Day in India and this year it was celebrated at CMC Ludhiana with due regard to all Covid-19 protocols. Patients and staff continue to manage the pandemic as conditions allow.
In May last year Dr Bhatti wrote: You will have read about the paucity of oxygen supplies across India. Fortunately we are still managing to cater to this huge influx. We have now had to upgrade our Oxygen facilities with new oxygen generators and hopefully a new liquid oxygen plant.
All this has put a strain on our existing back end facilities especially our substation, which we are now upgrading urgently.
The Electrical substation in the Hospital plays a vital role in the functioning of the Hospital. The performance and stability of the medical equipment greatly depends on the quality of input electrical Power Supply. More over during this pandemic many patients are on Life support equipment, even a minor malfunction in the Substation can affect the safety of the patient. Last week also we had an incident of malfunctioning of an Air Circuit Breaker. The timely intervention of the electrical team managed the situation without an adverse event.
So the upgrading of the substation is an urgent requirement, which will improve the electrical supply quality, safety, efficiency and above all Quality of Care for the patients. The estimated cost is more than £295,000
The latest report from Dr Bhatti says:
“Regarding the Substation I have collected funds from a local donor, and so far I have collected INR 20 lacs. (£20,000)
The US board has promised a matching grant for the Substation project. If Friends of Ludhiana is contributing funds for this project, I will be able to raise an equal amount from the US board.”
Initially Friends of Ludhiana felt uneasy about trying to support such a huge project but now we know our donations will be matched by Friends of Ludhiana in America we have already sent £15,000 and this will be matched by money from America. We have received grateful thanks from Ludhiana and US.
