Dr. Paul Farmer passed away unexpectedly in his sleep on Monday, Feb. 21st. at the age of 62. Many of you who follow Healing Art Missions (HAM) or international public health news, may recognize the name. In 2003, the author Tracy Kidder wrote Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World, which describes Farmer's work in Haiti, Peru, and Russia and brought Dr. Farmer’s extraordinary vision to the world. I had been working in Haiti for several years when the book was published and previously had the great fortune of meeting Dr. Farmer and learning about he and his Partners In Health (PIH) cofounders unique vision. Their community-based treatment strategies delivered high-quality health care in resource-poor settings in the U.S. and abroad. Dr. Farmer’s vision and determination were a great influence as we developed HAM’s work model.
Dr. Paul Farmer at work (credit below)
In HAM’s younger days of the early 2000’s, when we were attempting to figure out how to deliver primary health care in rural Haiti, I reached out to Paul Farmer via email. He wrote back! He connected me to the PIH sister organization, Zanmi Lasante and their team in Haiti. Loune Viaud (ED of ZL) picked me up on a street in Croix-des-Bouquets and drove me way up into the Central Plateau, to Zanmi Lasante hospital in Cange. I will never forget her chastising me on the trip up for my inability to converse with her in Kreyol. Luckily everyone there was fluent in English. I toured the facility, went on rounds with the doctors, and followed accompagnateurs into the countryside, to visit HIV and TB patients making sure they had all they needed to take their daily medications. I was fed and given a place to sleep.
Treking supplies through the mountains to the Healing Art Missions clinic in Demier.
The entire trip was about what they could do for me, and thereby HAM and the people of Dumay. In those days I was training to run the Columbus Marathon, so I was in pretty good shape, or so I thought. During the ride up the mountain to the hospital and back, I got terrible motion sickness and had to stop to vomit at least once. Hiking with the accompagnateurs visiting patients left me breathless, sweaty and exhausted. At one point we stopped and a woman ran out of her mud and stick home with a plastic chair for me to sit in. I had a lot to learn.
Around 2004, I attended a medical conference at the Montana Hotel in Port-au-Prince, long before it’s tragic collapse during the 2010 earthquake. The keynote speaker was Dr. Paul Farmer. He was encouraging Direct Observation Therapy, DOT, for infectious diseases requiring long term care like Tuberculosis and Aids. I cannot remember the exact quote, but he said something along the lines of: we all need to be working to offer the same level of care in Haiti that we can access in the USA. He continued, saying we should be offering comprehensive care for infectious diseases, including TB and HIV. If we aren’t, we should stop patting ourselves on the back and we should work harder. As conference attendees bellied up to the bar that evening, many were angry. “How dare he say that about us!” Personally, I was sobered by the talk; Paul Farmer was absolutely right. That may be the origin of one of my favorite sayings, “if you’re not making someone angry, you’re not accomplishing anything.”
HAM started working on our HIV/TB program that year, with a great deal of help from Zanmi Lasante and Paul Farmer, who connected HAM to sources for medical supplies and the people needed to get supplies through Haitian customs. We sent teams of HAM employees up to Cange for training, and they sent education materials, for patients and staff, to us. HAM staff members stood on a street corner in Croix-des-Bouquets and handed off blood samples of HIV patients to Doctors traveling to Cange so they could run tests needed to evaluate whether or not the HIV medications were working. PIH/Zanmi Lasante and Paul Farmer did all they could to help HAM succeed at bringing comprehensive care to our community in Haiti.
I personally, and HAM organizationally, have been significantly aided and influenced by Paul Farmer’s philosophy, words and actions, and for that, we are forever grateful.
“The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.”- Dr. Paul Farmer.
Dr. Tracee Laing
Founding Director, Healing Art Missions
(1) Photo of Paul Farmer is from Wikipedia and stated it must be attributed to the Author : By User: Cjmadson - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PEF-with-mom-and-baby---Quy-Ton-12-2003_1-1-310.jpg, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32838166