Doctor famous for helping in Haiti, Peru and Russia is now heading for Rwanda
In the deeply rural and desperately poor reaches of interior Haiti that Dr. Paul Farmer has made his home away from Harvard, people sickened with HIV are regularly brought back from the brink of death when they visit his clinic and begin taking antiviral drugs.
"It's a 'Lazarus effect.' That's what the people call it,'' said Farmer, the renowned physician and medical anthropologist whose tireless work in Haiti, Peru, the jails of Russia and the slums of Boston has set a standard for the care of AIDS and tuberculosis among the poor and dispossessed.
Last month, in partnership with the private foundation of former President Bill Clinton, he launched a new program to bring rural health care and AIDS treatment to remote eastern Rwanda -- a nation rising from a ghastly genocide a decade ago.
"We've been wanting to go there for a very long time,'' said Farmer, relaxing Friday at the Berkeley home of a friend before delivering this morning's commencement address at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.
The 45-year-old Farmer, described as "a man who would cure the world" in a profile of his work by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder, was also in the Bay Area to receive an award Wednesday from Global Exchange, the San Francisco human rights advocacy group.
"He's an uncompromising critic of war, poverty, violence and oppression, because all of those things affect his patients' lives,'' said Global Exchange spokeswoman Andrea Buffa.
Like Haiti, Rwanda is rugged and rural, impoverished, with a history of political instability. An estimated 500,000 Rwandans are infected with HIV, many of them women who were gang-raped during the genocide.
Despite a desire to bring his work to Africa, Farmer has previously avoided a major commitment. He feared making a promise he could not keep. "To work in a very poor country, like Haiti, or Rwanda, you need lots of resources, '' he said.
But publicity from Kidder's 2003 book, "Mountains Beyond Mountains," drew additional attention to the work of Partners in Health, the Boston charity that finances Farmer's work. That acclaim, commitments from wealthy American donors, and a blossoming relationship with the William J. Clinton Foundation based in New York conspired to bring Partners in Health to Rwanda.
Farmer's team is already settin
"It's a 'Lazarus effect.' That's what the people call it,'' said Farmer, the renowned physician and medical anthropologist whose tireless work in Haiti, Peru, the jails of Russia and the slums of Boston has set a standard for the care of AIDS and tuberculosis among the poor and dispossessed.
Last month, in partnership with the private foundation of former President Bill Clinton, he launched a new program to bring rural health care and AIDS treatment to remote eastern Rwanda -- a nation rising from a ghastly genocide a decade ago.
"We've been wanting to go there for a very long time,'' said Farmer, relaxing Friday at the Berkeley home of a friend before delivering this morning's commencement address at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.
The 45-year-old Farmer, described as "a man who would cure the world" in a profile of his work by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder, was also in the Bay Area to receive an award Wednesday from Global Exchange, the San Francisco human rights advocacy group.
"He's an uncompromising critic of war, poverty, violence and oppression, because all of those things affect his patients' lives,'' said Global Exchange spokeswoman Andrea Buffa.
Like Haiti, Rwanda is rugged and rural, impoverished, with a history of political instability. An estimated 500,000 Rwandans are infected with HIV, many of them women who were gang-raped during the genocide.
Despite a desire to bring his work to Africa, Farmer has previously avoided a major commitment. He feared making a promise he could not keep. "To work in a very poor country, like Haiti, or Rwanda, you need lots of resources, '' he said.
But publicity from Kidder's 2003 book, "Mountains Beyond Mountains," drew additional attention to the work of Partners in Health, the Boston charity that finances Farmer's work. That acclaim, commitments from wealthy American donors, and a blossoming relationship with the William J. Clinton Foundation based in New York conspired to bring Partners in Health to Rwanda.
Farmer's team is already settin
posted by AIDS-Care-Watch at 1:45 am
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