At the 8th-annual ForbesHealth Summit, medical anthropologist Paul Farmer talked about the impact of Partners In Health, the organization he co-founded in 1987
“If you look at any of the places where we’ve been lucky enough to work,” he said, “in every instance mortality has decreased and well-being has gone up.”
Now 60, Farmer recounted an example of a Haitian friend who had contracted both tuberculosis and AIDS 20 years ago and purchased his own coffin after being diagnosed. Thanks to the installation of clinics and vaccines—part of PIC’s worldwide model for healthcare in poor communities—that friend is still living and had spoken to Farmer on the phone a day prior to the summit.
“We don’t see the kind of catastrophe [in Haiti] that we see in Sierra Leone and Liberia,” said Farmer. “That’s because of interventions that haven’t been brought in scale to other places.” Not content to rest on his laurels, Farmer and his team have started to expand PIC’s work elsewhere. His team entered West Africa only five years ago, he said, as he reflected on his first visit to the region.
That 2014 trip to Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, coincided with the Ebola outbreak that caused closure of schools across the country, as well as in neighboring Guinea and Liberia. At the time, these areas lacked adequate medical systems, and Farmer recalled being moved witnessing mothers, sisters, fathers and brothers caring for and burying their family members while risking catching the same illnesses.
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