As you may have gathered from recent newsletters, there is a lot going on at LAMB. And things seem to be getting even busier.
Some things are not direct work for the local community. For example, earlier this month LAMB helped organize a 3-day conference at LAMB for 12 Christian organizations doing community work in Bangladesh. The objective was for us to set up a network together and help each other. It was a real success.
Later this month we expect to be holding our second Medical Students conference. At the first conference a couple of years ago, there were more than 40 medical students of differing religions, seeing and listening about a caring approach for medicine, and caring for the poor. They have been asking that we hold more similar conferences.
Also since the last newsletter, by invitation a LAMB expert presented at an international Maternal Health conference in India. We were also very pleased that one of our Directors was invited to be part of the Bangladesh delegation to the very important Third World Lausanne Congress on Christian mission in Cape Town.
Back here at LAMB, all the normal work goes on. In future newsletters I hope that we can give some small glimpses of the difference the hospital makes to individuals, to results from all the community teams, etc.
On the bigger scale, starting properly in January, we will be working with churches across a fairly broad area to help them act as catalysts in their village communities to help cope better in times of disasters. In part of our area, floods are an annual ‘disaster’. And, in surprising contrast, not very far away in another part of our area insufficient water is becoming the big problem. Irrigation is crucial for having enough food to survive. Both problems are being worsened by climate change effects. As you can imagine, the work in these areas is very much focused on the poor, consistent with where we believe we are called to work. Working through churches on this scale is not something we have done before, but want to do, to help them build an outward looking vision putting their faith in action.
An area of concern that we have at the moment is the funding of the Rehabilitation Unit. We are (gratefully) able to carry out surgery to repair cleft lips and cleft palates, non-surgical correction of club feet, and to make many kinds of assistive devices such as wheel chairs, and tailor-made walkers and chairs. The work we would like to continue, but for which part of the funding has ended, is for other disabled children. The children and a parent can spend up to a week at LAMB Rehab Centre to be assessed and the parent(s) trained in the therapy. Thereafter, in our community work areas, there are monthly clinics where checks are made on the children, refresher therapy training given, and parents are simply able to get together and share common experiences.
This is not an area that is easy to fund because parents are not usually able to pay, and because the need just goes on for ever. It is not as if there is a nice simple cure that we do and everything is OK. But there is a big need, and it is not one which is a priority for mainstream society and government.
I wrote earlier about the growing shortage of doctors – at the same time as growing patient numbers. We took a fairly big step and increased doctors’ salaries, and it looks like for now our problems are much reduced. It has been very stressful on the doctors we have, and so we are glad to be getting back to a more reasonable (but still very busy) workload and number of night on-calls.
Thank you as always for your various kinds of support.
