Geburtsdatum | Montag, 26. Oktober 1959 |
Geburtsort | North Adams, Massachusetts, U.S. |
Todesort | Burera_District |
Sternzeichen | |
Beschreibung | Paul Edward Farmer (26. Oktober 1959 - 21. Februar 2022) war ein amerikanischer medizinischer Anthropologe und Arzt. Farmer promovierte an der Harvard University, wo er Universitätsprofessor und Vorsitzender der Abteilung für globale Gesundheit und Sozialmedizin an der Harvard Medical School war. Er war Mitbegründer und Chefstratege von Partners In Health (PIH), einer internationalen gemeinnützigen Organisation, die seit 1987 direkte Gesundheitsdienste anbietet und Forschungs- und Advocacy-Aktivitäten für kranke und in Armut lebende Menschen durchführt. Er war Professor für Medizin und Leiter der Abteilung für Global Health Equity am Brigham and Women's Hospital. |
Civil and political rights are critical, but not often the real problem for the destitute sick. My patients in Haiti can now vote but they can't get medical care or clean water.
Haiti is always talking about decentralization and nothing has been so obvious, perhaps a weakness, as the centralized nature of Haitian society as being revealed by the earthquake. I mean, they lost all these medical training programs because they didn't have them anywhere else.
So I can't show you how, exactly, health care is a basic human right. But what I can argue is that no one should have to die of a disease that is treatable.
It is clear that the pharmaceutical industry is not, by any stretch of the imagination, doing enough to ensure that the poor have access to adequate medical care.
The biggest public health challenge is rebuilding health systems. In other words, if you look at cholera or maternal mortality or tuberculosis in Haiti, they're major problems in Haiti, but the biggest problem is rebuilding systems.
You can't have public health without a public health system. We just don't want to be part of a mindless competition for resources. We want to build back capacity in the system.
I mean, everybody should have access to medical care. And, you know, it shouldn't be such a big deal.
We've taken on the major health problems of the poorest - tuberculosis, maternal mortality, AIDS, malaria - in four countries. We've scored some victories in the sense that we've cured or treated thousands and changed the discourse about what is possible.
But if you're asking my opinion, I would argue that a social justice approach should be central to medicine and utilized to be central to public health. This could be very simple: the well should take care of the sick.
If any country was a mine-shaft canary for the reintroduction of cholera, it was Haiti - and we knew it. And in retrospect, more should have been done to prepare for cholera... which can spread like wildfire in Haiti... This was a big rebuke to all of us working in public health and health care in Haiti.
Anywhere you have extreme poverty and no national health insurance, no promise of health care regardless of social standing, that's where you see the sharp limitations of market-based health care.
