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

More quotes by Paul Farmer

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Ebola has not yet come into contact with modern medicine in West Africa. But when protocols for the provision of high quality supportive care are followed, the case fatality rate for Ebola may be lower than 20 percent.
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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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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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I would say that, intellectually, Catholicism had no more impact on me than did social theory.
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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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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 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 idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.
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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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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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The thing about rights is that in the end you can't prove what should be considered a right.
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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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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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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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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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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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If I am hungry, that is a material problem if someone else is hungry, that is a spiritual problem.
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I think that looking forward it's easy to imagine more constructive help for Haiti.
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It is very expensive to give bad medical care to poor people in a rich country.
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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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