Paul Farmer
Paul Farmer
Paul Edward Farmeris an American anthropologist and physician who is best known for his humanitarian work providing suitable health care to rural and under-resourced areas in developing countries, beginning in Haiti. Co-founder of an international social justice and health organization, Partners In Health, he is known as "the man who would cure the world," as described in the book, Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth26 October 1959
CountryUnited States of America
The prestigious Hilton Humanitarian Prize is a terrific boost as we seek not only to provide direct medical services in seven countries, including our own, but also to bring countless supporters into a broad and global movement to promote basic rights for the poor. Winning the Hilton Prize is the greatest recognition yet received by Partners In Health, and we are proud, honored and grateful.
You look around the U.S., and the nature of the people who settled in New Orleans is such that you couldnt go to another part of the country and find that mixture. Thats one reason the ties are so strong.
Well, I don't think that the role of the pharmaceutical industry is any different from that of other transnational corporations.
I am grateful for the chance to turn this into a movement. I am inspired to be part of a growing movement to eliminate poverty.
Shuttling back and forth between what is possible and what is likely to occur is instructive and a lot of what shapes our sentiment.
It is one of our more stable cities in terms of a population that has stayed, ... It's not a city where people leave in large percentages or arrive in large percentages, except as tourists. So I think you're going to see a very strong impulse among the people there to rebuild.
I mean we grew up in a TB bus and I became a TB doctor.
One of the things we have to acknowledge is that if you look at Haiti, many billions of dollars have gone into development aid there that have not been effective.
I've been working in Haiti 28 years - I thought I'd sort of seen it... I've gone through a number of coups, the storms of 2008, I thought, you know, that I'd seen things as bad as they were going to get, and I was wrong.
I don't know much about climate change. But I'm pretty sure we better figure out what to do to lessen its impact - at least its health impact - and that's not going to happen unless you have a lot of young talent interested in these topics.
Well, we've worked with our friends in Haiti to establish nothing short of a modern medical center in one of the poorest parts of that country.
We have opened a hospital that was abandoned since the genocide 10 years ago and put some hundreds of patients on anti-retroviral therapy, for example, in the middle of rural Africa. We have also, needless to say, focused on whatever it is that ails the people who are coming to this hospital and the clinic sites around. And, that is everything from distress during labor, to malaria, of course to other projects. We do not have any doubt that this project will be a great success.
So I can't show you how, exactly, health care is a basic human right. But what I can argue is that no one should have to die of a disease that is treatable.
If you look at people who seek a lot of care in American cities for multiple illnesses, it's usually people with a number of overwhelming illnesses and a lot of social problems, like housing instability, unemployment, lack of insurance, lack of housing, or just bad housing.