‘Thirst for Life’ project gets new dialysis machines

Three Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy (CRRT) machines worth over Rs. 7.5 million were donated under the Singer ‘Thirst for Life’ health and wellness sustainability project of Singer Sri Lanka, making the total number of machines donated to six units in helping those affected by Chronic Kidney Disease(CKD). Donations were handed over by Asoka Pieris - Group CEO, Mahesh Wijewardene – Director, Sales and Commercial, Kumar Samarasinghe -Director - Marketing of Singer Sri Lanka PLC to Dr. Anil Jasinghe Director General of the National Hospital.

Three national hospitals

The donations were made to three national hospitals that were in dire need of this expensive equipment. They were the Dialysis Unit of National Hospital (NHSL) – Colombo, Base Hospital – Wathupitiwala and General Hospital - Jaffna.

Prior to the handing over of these high-tech machines, Singer had donated three Dialysis machines since the inception of the project three years ago.

Two of them were donated to the Polonnaruwa Base Hospital in mid-2013 at a cost of Rs. 4 million while the third machine was donated to Medawachchiya - Hospital in December 2014.

Asoka Pieris, Group CEO of Singer Sri Lanka said “We are happy to donate three more CRRT machines, that will help the national hospitals to cope with the high rate of kidney-related patients in the country and we truly trust that our initiative will be followed by others in saving lives.”

Sustainability project

Manager in charge of the project, Darshana Appuhamy - Senior Brand Manager of Singer, said, ‘Thirst for Life’ is a fully-integrated sustainability project that witnessed the company responds to a social concern by adopting a broad-based, remedial and public service campaign over the issue of waterborne diseases. The mechanics of the project was devised at Singer and carried out across the country by the Singer retail and dealer network.

Singer found a direct link between the absence of filtered or purified water and the crisis over CKD1 primarily found in the North Central Province.

The project was initiated when Singer found that many hospitals were unable to treat CKD patients”.

Director-Sales and Commercial of Singer Sri Lanka Mahesh Wijewardene said, “Singer is concerned about educating society to access clean water, as prevention is better than facilitating proper healthcare to cure and heal victims of CKD. It is our obligation to help this national cause of fighting this menacing kidney diseases and commenced the ‘Thirst for Life’ project three years ago.”

He said every time a customer purchased a Singer Water Filter or Water Purifier from any Singer outlet or authorized dealer, they contribute Rs.100 towards the purchase of these urgently needed dialysis machines”.