For what lies at the heart of the project is a belief that knowledge and education are the best cure. What this means, in practical terms, is that although some of the original medical staff were trained by Western volunteers, the current staff are mainly of Bangladeshi origin. This emphasis on medical education is pervasive and diverse. Seminars on topics such as ante- and post-natal care and safe motherhood are open to all. Community leaders receive training on nutrition and disability, and all local medical practitioners are invited to tutorials with the boat staff. Dr Hasib Mahmud, the director of the Jibon Tari, says: "The work that takes place in the boat's operating theatre is more than equalled in importance by that of the onboard seminar rooms."

Since the boat was launched, it has undertaken 39 projects in 18 different districts of Bangladesh and has treated — at the last count-262,779 patients. The Jibon Tari has "literally been a life-raft", says Dr Mahmud. It costs £335,000 a year to run, a massive amount in local terms but a trifling figure in the context of the sums spent on health care in the West.

Although there is much that makes this charity unique — all medical staff are trained to deal with almost any conceivable natural hazard, from electrical storms to cyclones — it is the marriage of resource and resourcefulness that makes it so effective. And unlike much of Indian and Pakistani medical aid, it ensures that the benefits of this hospital are not confined to immediate outpatients. 

Its mobility is only one of the elements that make the scope of the Bangladesh boat so far-reaching. For to communities that are, in the very truest sense, crippled by their poverty and environment, the endowment of knowledge is one of the few things that has the capacity to liberate them.