Home »

Doctor Paul Farmer addresses poverty, violence, health care

When something stumps Dr. Paul Farmer, it often means it?s time to write another book.

?I actually write to learn,? he said from his office at Harvard Medical School.

Farmer said he figured out a better way to deliver health care to the world?s poor while writing Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor.

In 1987, Farmer, an infectious-disease specialist, helped launch Partners In Health, a social justice organization, which worked for 20 years to build a hospital in Haiti. Now complete, it?s clean, boasts two operating rooms and a blood bank, and provides free health care to the poor. How much better can it get?

But while writing Pathologies of Power, Farmer came to a new realization: In today?s world, health care is usually offered to the poor as a gift instead of as a right.

The idea prompted Farmer to develop a new approach to health care, and Partners In Health has since laid plans to rebuild the public sector.

?We?ve redone seven public hospitals, all in the last five years,? Farmer said. ?And that really came out of thinking this through.?

?There?s nothing wrong with charity. I think charity?s great,? he said. ?But it?s even better if (the poor) have the right to health care, and they don?t have to depend on the kindness of strangers, like me. They can go (to the hospital) knowing they?ll be taken care of.?

Farmer received the J.I. Staley Prize from the the School of American Research in Santa Fe for his work on Pathologies of Power.

But it was after working in Haiti, Guatemala and Rwanda for many years, that Farmer began to wonder just how much a doctor should know about violence.

Swords of Sorrow, the book that Farmer is working on now, addresses health, and health care, and the pervasiveness of violence in the modern world.

Farmer is able to treat a man with a gunshot wound, a woman injured by a machete, a child maimed by a land mine, but after a while, he said, you start wondering how to keep these things from happening at all.

Farmer recently became interested in the economy of war and how wars are sustained. The United States, for instance, helped fund the Guatemalan army, supporting, in this case, ?the bad guys,? Farmer said.

?I don?t want to sound anti-American,? he said. ?I?m not. A lot of it has to do with policy.

?The roots of violence are not from God, and they?re not from Hurricane Mitch. It?s all human. So if humans made it like this, then we can undo it, too.?

Farmer recalled one day in Haiti when doctors at a Partners In Health hospital had made plans to interview four potential nurses. After a long day?s work, the interviews were delayed until 9 p.m.

Afterward, the four nurses, and a doctor, headed home together. A short time later, they were kidnapped, by rebels. The rebels didn?t hurt their captives, but they did steal the hospital?s ambulance before releasing them.

After the incident, Farmer?s thoughts ran in circles.

?I?m a doctor,? he said. ?I just want to do my work. Why should I have to ask how they got those guns? It?s absurd.

?I work there. If I ask too many questions, then someone like me is going to get killed, and what good is that going to be for my patients or to my family?

?I see stuff like this too much,? he said. ?Maybe I should think about it and at least expose the mechanisms by which this stuff goes on.?

Farmer said he finds consolation in knowing why things happen and in figuring out how to stop them.

?It?s not a handbook of how to deal with trauma, or how to deal with land mine victims, or how to protect yourself and your staff,? he said of his latest project. ?It?s a book about why these things happen.?

To find out more, visit www.pih.org.

You can read more about Farmer in Tracy Kidder?s book, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World.

Contact Diana Heil at 986-3066 or dheil@sfnewmexican.com.

Global health and world violence

* What: A talk by Dr. Paul Farmer, a medical anthropologist at Harvard Medical School who has won multiple honors for serving the poor.

* When: 8 p.m. Thursday

* Where: Greer Garson Theater, College of Santa Fe campus

* Cost: free