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I'm one of six kids, and the eight of us lived for over a decade in either a bus or a boat.

Paul Farmer

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Paul Farmer
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: October 26
Anthropologist
Human Rights Activist
Medical Anthropologist
Physician
North Adams
Massachusetts
Six
Eight
Lived
Either
Kids
Decade
Bus
Boat
Decades

More quotes by Paul Farmer

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That's when I feel most alive, when I'm helping people.
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What I can argue is that no one should have to die of a disease that is treatable.
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I think, sometimes, that I'm going nuts, and that perhaps there is something good about blocking clean water for those who have none, making sure that illiterate children remain so, and preventing the resuscitation of the public health sector in the country most in need of it. Lunacy is what it is.
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I've been asked a lot for my view on American health care. Well, 'it would be a good idea,' to quote Gandhi.
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For me, an area of moral clarity is: you're in front of someone who's suffering and you have the tools at your disposal to alleviate that suffering or even eradicate it, and you act.
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We have to design a health delivery system by actually talking to people and asking, 'What would make this service better for you?' As soon as you start asking, you get a flood of answers.
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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.
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lean water and health care and school and food and tin roofs and cement floor, all of these things should constitute a set of basics that people must have as birthrights.
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Equity is the only acceptable goal
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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.
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You can't have public health without working with the public sector. You can't have public education without working with the public sector in education.
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At the same time, it is obvious that clinicians in Haiti are faced with different, and, in fact, greater, challenges when attempting to treat complications of HIV disease.
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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.
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If I am hungry, that is a material problem if someone else is hungry, that is a spiritual problem.
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The essence of global health equity is the idea that something so precious as health might be viewed as a right.
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I've been impressed, over the last 15 years, with how often the somewhat conspiratorial comments of Haitian villagers have been proven to be correct when the historical record is probed carefully.
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The world is full of miserable places. One way of living comfortably is not to think about them or, when you do, to send money
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The idea that because you're born in Haiti you could die having a child. The idea that because you're born in you know Malawi your children may go to bed hungry. We want to take some of the chance out of that.
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Everybody should be interested in access to primary and secondary education for everybody.
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It is very expensive to give bad medical care to poor people in a rich country.
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