Quote

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

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
Make
Design
Would
Health
People
Answers
System
Delivery
Start
Flood
Talking
Service
Actually
Soon
Better
Asking

More quotes by 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
If I am hungry, that is a material problem if someone else is hungry, that is a spiritual problem.
Paul Farmer
Image
The essence of global health equity is the idea that something so precious as health might be viewed as a right.
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
Some people talk about Haiti as being the graveyard of development projects.
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
The thing about rights is that in the end you can't prove what should be considered a right.
Paul Farmer
Image
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.
Paul Farmer
Image
It is very expensive to give bad medical care to poor people in a rich country.
Paul Farmer
Image
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
Image
I would say that, intellectually, Catholicism had no more impact on me than did social theory.
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
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.
Paul Farmer
Image
Equity is the only acceptable goal
Paul Farmer
Image
Everybody should be interested in access to primary and secondary education for everybody.
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
With rare exceptions, all of your most important achievements on this planet will come from working with others- or, in a word, partnership.
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
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.
Paul Farmer
Image
The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.
Paul Farmer