What I Learned about Giving from Paul Farmer's Inspirational Life and Work
Doctor and author Paul Farmer, who died Monday, was committed to caring for the poor. A Duke University grad, he created global models for medical treatment and a universal example of good works.
Paul Farmer’s life had nothing to do with Western North Carolina — unless you see inequality in our region and world and think something should be done about it.
Farmer fought his whole life to bring not just adequate healthcare, but modern, advanced healthcare — the kind of healthcare that rich people demand for themselves — to the poorest countries and the poorest people in the world.
This work is irrelevant if you believe we have no connection to, no responsibility for, the suffering of fellow humans in Haiti or Rwanda, in Russian prisons or in the urban slums of Peru.
You can ignore the news of Farmer’s unexpected death at age 62 if you think that everybody in our own community gets a fair shake and has fair access to the resources needed to lead dignified and healthy lives.
No?
I hope not and, if not, this is what you should know about Farmer.
He grew up in the Florida county where I worked for 28 years and where he lived with his parents and five brothers and sisters — first in a converted school bus parked in a rural campground and, later, on a houseboat moored in a swamp near the Gulf of Mexico.
His brilliance took him to Duke University, where he graduated summa cum laude, and then to Harvard University, where he received both a medical degree and a doctorate in medical anthropology.
His empathy, as well as his outrage at the inequities in the distribution of healthcare, took him to Haiti, where he volunteered at a small and isolated clinic after graduating from Duke. Over the next 20 years, he transformed it into a national center for the treatment of preventable and curable diseases such as tuberculosis, and into a global model for addressing the ravages of AIDS, which in much of the world was considered anything but curable.
As you may remember, an AIDS diagnosis was once a death sentence. Though by the early 2000s that was no longer true in rich countries, it remained so in much of Africa and in Haiti, where infection was rampant and where paying for and distributing the expensive cocktail of drugs needed to control the disease was considered “impractical” and “unsustainable.”
The story of Farmer’s response to this conventional belief is detailed in Tracy Kidder’s acclaimed and inspirational book, Mountains Beyond Mountains, (and at least mentioned in some of the dozen books published by Farmer himself) so I’ll just tell you this: Farmer definitively proved it was not true.
When I wrote about Farmer and his work for my old newspaper in 2004, the AIDS patients he saw in central Haiti were all receiving the drugs they needed. They were robust enough that during check ups they talked less about their symptoms and more about the common Haitian preoccupations of finding food, jobs and decent housing.
This is an old story but worth repeating because Farmer and the organization he helped found, Partners in Health, combated similarly entrenched and lazy ideas about delivering aid again and again over the next 18 years, throughout Haiti and in more than a dozen countries around the world.
I visited Haiti again, six months after the devastating 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince, in part to push back on what was becoming the dominant narrative of its aftermath — that the billions of dollars donated by private and government sources were all being frittered away by charities and contractors.
It helped justify a comforting conclusion among potential donors, one that has been applied to crises throughout the world, especially in corrupt and chaotic countries: Trying to provide outside aid to people who need it is futile; charity is pointless.
On that trip I visited the office of a large non-governmental organization that was filled with deskbound workers. I accompanied their field staffers on a clearly uninspired and inadequate aid mission, handing out Snackables-like lunch boxes to nearly naked children in a dirt-floored, tarped-over “school.”
And, by contrast, I saw the start of construction of a Partners in Health’s teaching hospital, which would become one of the few fulfillments of the American pledge to “build back better.”
This hospital would be the pride of any medium-sized town in the United States, with 300 beds, a highly trained staff and modern medical equipment. Just as important, in its construction and operation, it was dedicated to both caring for patients and empowering the people who provided that care.
Its American architect and contractor volunteered their services. The paid construction supervisors and workers were Haitian. So were almost all of the doctors and nurses it would go on to employ. It was created as a teaching institution specifically so future generations of Haitians could carry on this work.
It showed that helping people in far away places isn’t really that complicated, just very difficult. The recipe, perfected by Partners, is to commit to countries for the long haul, to learn and respect their language, culture and political leaders, to, basically, live up to the Christian and American ideals about the sanctity and equality of human life.
Reporters aren’t supposed to form emotional bonds with sources, but I did with Farmer, whom I consider the smartest, kindest and most committed person I ever met.
I accompanied him on a handful of his standard dawn-to-midnight workdays. They were filled with humor and — incredibly, considering the constant suffering he encountered — joy. But they were also exhausting, and my first thought, when I read about his passing on Monday, was that he had worked himself to death in the service of others.
The easiest way to honor his commitment is to donate to Partners; I can guarantee you that the need is greater than ever and there will be no frittering away of funds. But inequality can also be seen all around our two-tiered communities. I’ve never lived in a place so dramatically filled with haves and have nots — or with so many organizations worthy of our money, time and energy.
It’s probably a disservice to Farmer to say that his most lasting contribution is his example. He is, after all, directly or indirectly responsible for saving millions of lives. But his work is a reminder that however you chose to help, charity isn’t bad word and doesn’t have to feel like a handout. It can enrich both recipients and donors. It can do real good. Paul Farmer proved it.
good people recognize others who serve, thank you for writing about this wonderful man
Thanks for reading, Nancy. I think they will. He also attracted and trained great people.