Paul Farmer was a student and 23 years old when he first traveled to Haiti in 1983. He was disappointed in the hospitals sponsored by foreign aid, because they were staffed mainly by white expatriate doctors. He envisioned a hospital at least partly devoted to training Haitians treating Haitians. In 1984 he was admitted to Harvard medical school, and from then on he divided his time between Boston and the village of Cange in Haiti, where he founded a health clinic known as "Zanmi Lasante".
Partners In Health : A Nonprofit Challenges Health Policymakers
In 1987 Paul Farmer founded the Boston-based nonprofit "Partners in Health (PIH)" with his friends Thomas J. White, and Todd McCormack to support medical work in Haiti. "Zanmi Lasante" (Haitian Creole for "Partners in Health") has grown from a one-building clinic to a health complex including a primary school, an infirmary, two operating rooms and a training program for community health workers. Zanmi Lasante is well known for its successful HIV Equity Initiative, that provides antiretroviral therapy to AIDS patients.
Poverty and Lack of Medical Care Go Hand in Hand
"Partners in Health" seeks to raise the standard of health care in underdeveloped areas of the world. Paul Farmer was attracted to Haiti because it redefined poverty for him. The peasant farmers in Cange lived in a squatter settlement ravaged by disease. They had never seen medical care and the area was difficult to reach on dangerous roads.
As a scholar and writer, Paul Farmer always asserts the interconnectedness of the rich and poor parts of the world. Cange sits on the edge of Lake Peligre, created by a large hydroelectric dam. The Peligre Dam was build by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the 1950s and it is Farmer's favorite case study.
How A Minor Error in the Rich World Can Impact The Poor Dramatically
"The Peligre Dam is a cautionary tale about the horrible things sometimes done by governmental and international organizations in the name of development. (Haiti Innovation)" The dam was created as a flood-control and an energy-providing measure in the Artibonite river valley with money from the U.S. Export-Import Bank. No one seems to have given much thought to the peasant farmers who lived upstream.The dam was meant to benefit agribusiness downstream, mostly American-owned back then, and the electricity was for the wealthy Haitian elite in Port-au- Prince with the resources to enjoy it.
The lake buried the good farmland and ravaged the highlands. The peasants moved to the surrounding hills, where farming meant erosion and malnutrition (Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains,37). The villagers who stayed found themselves destitute after only a short time.
"We Do Whatever it Takes" is the Vision of Partners in Health
In 1998, Zanmi Lasante launched the world’s first program to provide free, comprehensive HIV care and treatment in an impoverished setting. This pilot effort was expanded across Central Haiti and became known as the HIV Equity Initiative. The very fact that Zanmi Lasante thrived based on community health work in one of the worst possible locations for a hospital, is a tribute to the PIH Vision.
"At its root, our mission is both medical and moral. It is based on solidarity, rather than charity alone. When a person in Peru, or Siberia, or rural Haiti falls ill, PIH uses all of the means at our disposal to make them well—from pressuring drug manufacturers, to lobbying policy makers, to providing medical care and social services. Whatever it takes. Just as we would do if a member of our own family—or we ourselves—were ill." (Partners in Health, Vision Statement)
An absorbing read on Paul Farmer's life and work by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder:
Tracy Kidder: Mountains Beyond Mountains. The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World, Random House, 2003.
Haiti Earthquake Relief Efforts at Zanmi Lasante
Paul Farmer and Partners in Health in Rwanda
Join the Conversation