Quote

The essence of global health equity is the idea that something so precious as health might be viewed as a right.

Paul Farmer

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Paul Farmer
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: October 26
Anthropologist
Human Rights Activist
Medical Anthropologist
Physician
North Adams
Massachusetts
Ideas
Might
Viewed
Right
Equity
Something
Precious
Global
Essence
Health
Idea

More quotes by Paul Farmer

Image
I've been asked a lot for my view on American health care. Well, 'it would be a good idea,' to quote Gandhi.
Paul Farmer
Image
Some people talk about Haiti as being the graveyard of development projects.
Paul Farmer
Image
The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.
Paul Farmer
Image
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.
Paul Farmer
Image
That's when I feel most alive, when I'm helping people.
Paul Farmer
Image
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.
Paul Farmer
Image
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.
Paul Farmer
Image
People call me a saint and I think, I have to work harder. Because a saint would be a great thing to be.
Paul Farmer
Image
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
Image
If I am hungry, that is a material problem if someone else is hungry, that is a spiritual problem.
Paul Farmer
Image
Equity is the only acceptable goal
Paul Farmer
Image
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.
Paul Farmer
Image
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
Paul Farmer
Image
It is very expensive to give bad medical care to poor people in a rich country.
Paul Farmer
Image
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.
Paul Farmer
Image
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.
Paul Farmer
Image
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
Image
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.
Paul Farmer
Image
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.
Paul Farmer
Image
I think that looking forward it's easy to imagine more constructive help for Haiti.
Paul Farmer