Taking the hospital to the people

IMPACT's Jibon Tari floating hospital in Bangladesh provides medical care and surgery to underserved communities.

Each year, on average, 3,000 people benefit from life-transforming operations to restore their sight, movement or hearing, or repair cleft lip.

17 year-old Fultara was born with cleft lip. She described to our local colleagues how her disability overshadowed her life; 'Every child deserves to live a regular life, but that is hard to do when you stand out by having a noticeable deformity on your lip. People call you names because they are ignorant to what you are going through. The teasing used to get worse if they saw me getting angry, so I chose to ignore them. I lost self-confidence and became very self-conscious...My father was a poor fisherman and he had no ability to arrange for a surgery for me.'

Now that Fultara has had successful surgery, she is looking forward to the future, 'The most important gift in my life, I received from IMPACT. Surgery has reshaped my look and I'm very happy now, which is beyond words to describe'.

www.impact.org.uk