Former President Bill Clinton writes about how public health leader Dr. Paul Farmer helped so many with his grace and vision
r. Paul Farmer, who died unexpectedly on Feb. 21 at the age of 62 in Rwanda, was one of the most extraordinary people I have ever known. As co-founder of the global health and social-justice organization Partners in Health, Paul spent more than 30 years fundamentally changing the way health care is delivered in the most impoverished places on earth.
While still a student at Harvard Medical School in the 1980s, Paul and his colleagues opened a one-room clinic in remote Cange, Haiti, where they not only cared for local residents, but also trained a team of community health workers to serve the surrounding areas. After he graduated, he practiced medicine in the U.S. for a few months a year to pay his bills, and devoted the rest of his time to the clinic in the Haitian highlands.
Within a few years, the clinic’s work gained worldwide notice for bringing tuberculosis under control in the area, at about 1% the per-patient cost in the U.S. Paul and his colleagues then achieved similarly impressive results against HIV/AIDS. Today,operates 16 health facilities in Haiti, including a teaching hospital, and employs a local staff of nearly 7,000.
Paul treated every person he met with genuine compassion, kindness, and dignity. He saw every day as a new opportunity to teach, learn, and serve. It was impossible to spend any amount of time with him and not feel the same. He also managed to become a wonderful husband, father, son, brother, colleague, mentor, and friend. His constant kindness to, and support for, Chelsea as she built her own career in public health is just one of hundreds of examples of that friendship.
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