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It is very expensive to give bad medical care to poor people in a rich country.

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
Medical
Rich
Poor
Give
Care
Country
Giving
People
Expensive

More quotes by Paul Farmer

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I think that looking forward it's easy to imagine more constructive help for Haiti.
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The poorest parts of the world are by and large the places in which one can best view the worst of medicine and not because doctors in these countries have different ideas about what constitutes modern medicine. It's the system and its limitations that are to blame.
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In fact, it seems to me that making strategic alliances across national borders in order to treat HIV among the world's poor is one of the last great hopes of solidarity across a widening divide.
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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.
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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 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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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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What I can argue is that no one should have to die of a disease that is treatable.
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I would say that, intellectually, Catholicism had no more impact on me than did social theory.
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Equity is the only acceptable goal
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That's when I feel most alive, when I'm helping people.
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People call me a saint and I think, I have to work harder. Because a saint would be a great thing to be.
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The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.
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God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he's not the one who's supposed to divvy up the loot. You want to see where Christ crucified abides today? Go to where the poor are suffering and fighting back, and that's where He is.
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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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Again, conventional Catholicism does not much appeal to me.
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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.
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The thing about rights is that in the end you can't prove what should be considered a right.
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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.
Paul Farmer