Quote

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.

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
Health
Tin
Food
Cement
Water
Birthright
School
Constitute
Care
Basics
Must
Lean
Things
Roof
People
Floor
Roofs

More quotes by Paul Farmer

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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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The thing about rights is that in the end you can't prove what should be considered a right.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.
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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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The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.
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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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It is very expensive to give bad medical care to poor people in a rich country.
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That's when I feel most alive, when I'm helping people.
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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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What I can argue is that no one should have to die of a disease that is treatable.
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I think that looking forward it's easy to imagine more constructive help for Haiti.
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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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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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