Programs
Paul Farmer
Co-founder of Partners in Health and
United Nations Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti
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“Development: Creating Sustainable Justice”
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“It’s the same story: People want jobs. They want to control their own fates. They want assistance, yes, but they also want dignity.”
Paul Farmer, M.D., Ph.D., is a medical anthropologist, physician and human rights activist who has dedicated his life to treating the world's poorest populations. In the process, he has raised health care standards in the world’s underdeveloped areas. Farmer is a founding director of Partners In Health, an international charitable organization providing direct health care services to the sick and those living in poverty and undertakes research and advocacy activities to benefit underprivileged populations. Farmer has worked in infectious disease control in the Americas for many years, and is a world-renowned authority on tuberculosis treatment and control.
Farmer is an attending physician in infectious diseases and chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and is medical director of the Clinique Bon Saveur in rural Haiti. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton recently appointed Farmer as the United Nations Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti to assist in advancing the economic and social development of the impoverished Caribbean nation.
His work draws primarily on active clinical practice and focuses on diseases that disproportionately afflict the poor. He is the author or co-author of over 100 scholarly publications and has published four books: Pathologies of Power, Infections and Inequalities, The Uses of Haiti and AIDS and Accusations.
His honorable and successful work was documented in the 2004 Tracy Kidder work, Mountains Beyond Mountains.
Watch 60 Minutes Interview |
Updated on 10/8/2009
