Remembering Dr. Paul Farmer

Paul Farmer, MDDr. Paul Farmer, co-founder and chief strategist at Partners in Health, died yesterday in Rwanda at the age of 62 (NYT Obituary).

His work in Haiti began while he was a student at Harvard Medical School:

“Even as Farmer was studying for his medical degree, he essentially lived in Haiti amid extremely low-income farmers who didn’t even have access to dependable electricity, let alone health care. Farmer was determined to change that.” (NPR).

I can’t do his accomplishments justice, but to quote author, John Green (Washington Post):

“Here is what I want you to know about Paul Farmer: He simply did not accept the idea that inequality of health-care access is natural or inevitable. Because of his belief, and because of the nonprofit health organization Partners in Health that he co-founded, millions of people in some of the poorest nations on Earth are alive today.”

We have many of his books in our collection, including:

The library also has his biography, Paul Farmer: Servant to the Poor, as well as Partner to the poor : a Paul Farmer reader.

You may also wish to watch Bending the Arc, a documentary (also available on Netflix) “the story of Partners In Health’s origins and how founders influenced international movements at the center of some of the world’s most pressing humanitarian crises”.

If you are interested in reading one of his books for an upcoming IHS Library Book Club, please email allison.piazza@shu.edu.