The LAMB Health Care Foundation (LHCF) is a Christian charitable trust founded and registered as a UK charity in 2003 - number 1101217.  It takes its name from the LAMB Project in north-west Bangladesh (LAMB stands for Lutheran Aid to Medicine in Bangladesh).   LHCF was set up by supporters in the UK who wish to see the LAMB Project and its vision continue to develop.  The Foundation’s main objectives are the relief of poverty, sickness and disability in South Asia.  Currently we are concentrating on providing financial support to the LAMB Project and promoting its model of integrated health care and community development, with emphasis on the rights of women.

North west Bangladesh is a rural area where 50% of the people are landless labourers for whom life is lived at the margin.  The main crop is paddy (rice) with two harvests a year, but most labourers are lucky to get work for only half the year. Money for healthcare is rarely available.

LAMB’s emphasis is to provide access to affordable healthcare by the poorest women and children.  70% of patients are too poor to pay the modest fees charged by the hospital to cover its costs and need financial help. In LAMB’s target areas 30% of women have their babies in local safe delivery units or in the hospital, compared with 10% in the country as a whole, and maternal and infant mortality is substantially less then the national average.

The LAMB Project trains Village Health Volunteers, who provide public health advice and basic health care in the community; helps communities to set up and manage local Health Care Centres incorporating maternity clinics; and runs a 150-bed hospital, which specialises in obstetrics and gynaecology but also includes medicine, paediatrics and general surgery.  It also has disability and tuberculosis programmes; and a Community Capacity Development Programme, which helps groups of women achieve financial self-reliance and play an active role in their communities.  The Project has a catchment area of over 1.5 million people and the hospital admits over 8,000 in-patients a year and sees around 55,000 out-patients.  For more detail, see LAMB model. 
LAMB is currently receiving, via LHCF, a grant from the Department for International Development to develop the LAMB model and extend it into some new districts. For more detail, see The DFID Project.
The LAMB Project website is at www.lambproject.org

The LAMB Project’s aim is to serve the poor and under-privileged, especially women and children.  It has never turned a patient away.  In an area where the wage for a day labourer is about 60 pence a day, many do not seek health care until is too late, because they are afraid of the cost.  It is well known locally that LAMB treats first and looks at the question of payment later.  For this reason the poor come to LAMB.  This is made possible by the Poor Fund, which pays for those who cannot afford even the low cost of their treatment and in total provides a subsidy of about £60,000 a year.