HW 24

Paul Farmer was a very admirable man who dedicated his life to help the poor with medical issues. His biggest belief was that you must treat every patient and through that model he helped build a small village in Haiti where all the poor received medical care. His model then started to spread to other countries. Farmer was showing the medical world a new way to deal with patients and although it is unlikely there will be many people like him, he showed what a small dedicated group of people can do.

It's a parallel universe. There really is no relation between the massive accumulation of wealth in one part of the world and abject misery in another. (Farmer, 218)

He is being sarcastic and showing that money is intertwined with the health care system and that those who have little money get bad healthcare. I think because he understand the relationship between money and medical care and is truly there to help the patient he is such an extraordinary doctor.

"Paul is a model of what should be done. He's not a model for how it has to be done. Let's celebrate him. Let's make sure people are inspired by him. But we can't say anybody should or could be just like him." (Jim Kim, 244)

this is a very important quote because it is unrealistic to hold someone to the standards of Paul Farmer because they are extraordinary but people should follow his goal which is to help all that are sick. People should use him as a model but not copy him.

"It's embarrassing that piddly little projects like ours should serve as exemplars. It's only because other people haven't been doing their jobs."(Farmer, 257)

Farmer understood why medical care for the poor was so terrible. He understand the issues in the system and knows that is the reason that people in Haiti have such terrible health care.


I think this book did a very good job of showing the suffering of the poor but also showed how people are being helped. Farmer focuses on helping the poor particularly because they receive the worst healthcare if any. The book shows an alternative way of dealing with illness and dying from the norm which is very uncommon. However, it also educates us on why things are the way they are medically.