LAMB NEWS – 18TH JANUARY 2010

Very Best Wishes for 2010

The past month has seen several annual celebration times at LAMB, including Victory Day, Christmas, and (western) New Year.

We had a full day program for Victory Day - celebrating the end of the Liberation War for Bangladesh in 1971. It went from flag-raising early in the morning right through to a big home-grown entertainment show in the late afternoon.

Christmas was not just a time for Christian staff, but was as always a time when all staff get together. The Staff Christmas Service in some ways seems more real here than for many readers of this news update. Live sheep – used as blood donors for the laboratory for culture growth – help to make the nativity play real. The life in the villages around us makes it easier to imagine Christ being born in a stable, (so long as we ignore the mobile phones that are common).

We celebrated western New Year well – but Bengali New Year is always the biggest one.

There were a couple of step changes in LAMB’s work in December – one program ending, one starting. After more than ten years providing micro-credit for women’s groups, LAMB has (successfully) handed over its activities to a local NGO. Bangladesh now has a number of very large competing micro-credit organizations, and LAMB chose to withdraw rather than grow into what is becoming a very commercial activity.

As a step up, we have started test work for a potential new program on nutrition supplements. There is a very large problem of underweight children, leading to underweight mothers, and hence many maternity problems we see at LAMB. The trial looks at the practicality of adding high nutrition content to normal food for pregnant women, new mothers and their infants. We hope that longer term it may be possible to reduce some of the problems that come to the hospital. We shall know in about 4 months whether or not a full nutrition trial will go ahead.

For this newsletter it seems worth giving a few facts and figures which help understand the problems the area around LAMB faces. LAMB is in a real rural location – there are rice fields all around - and yet in this area less than 20 miles square, (32 km square), there are well over a million people.

According to official statistics, the literacy rate excluding children below 7 years was less than 30% just 5 years ago. All areas were below the national average. Half the population is less than 18 years old. The average real age for marriage of girls is below 15 years old. These few simple facts show some of the problems to be overcome.

For those of you who support LAMB in prayer, we ask your support in 2010 as we continue to focus on our mission in a changing world.