"Dr. Paul Farmer is one of the most extraordinary people I've ever known. Partner to the Poor recounts his relentless efforts to eradicate disease, humanize health care, alleviate poverty, and increase opportunity and empowerment in the developing world. It will inspire us all to do our parts."--William J. Clinton "If the world is curious about Paul Farmer, there is a reason for that. No one has done more than he has in bringing modern medicine to the poor across the globe and no one has exceeded him in making us appreciate the diverse barriers that prevent proper medicine from reaching the underdogs of the world. In this wonderful collection of essays, putting together Paul Farmer's writings over more than two decades, we can see how his far-reaching ideas have developed and radically enhanced the understanding of the challenges faced by healthcare in the uneven world in which we live. This is an altogether outstanding book."--Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate, Economics "To delve into these pages is to join one of the world's great explorers on an epic life journey--to grapple with culture, poverty, disease, health care, ethics, and ultimately our common humanity in the Age of AIDS. Paul Farmer is a pioneer, guide, and inspiration at a time of unprecedented contrasts: between wealth and poverty, power and powerlessness, health and disease, compassion and neglect. His medical expertise, anthropological vision, and unflinching decency have helped to recharge our world with moral purpose."--Jeffrey D. Sachs, Columbia University "Wow! Perfect for teaching. This is more than vintage Farmer. Editor Haun Saussy knows Farmer's work inside out and has assembled and organized 25 classic articles that project the heart of Farmer's brilliant, radical, inspiring, eminently practical and (dare I say) genuinely subversive work."--Philippe Bourgois, author of Righteous Dopefiend "If they gave Nobel Prizes for raising moral awareness, Paul Farmer would have won his a long time ago. For several decades now, his work has posed a challenge to anyone who dares say that radically improving the health of the world's poor can't be done. This splendid compilation of the best of his work allows us to follow a restless, creative, compassionate mind in action, in and out of prisons and barrios and mud huts and hospital wards, from Haiti to Rwanda to Moscow, never taking 'no' for an answer."--Adam Hochschild, author of Bury the Chains "Paul Farmer is a deep scholar of Haitian society, a formidable medical anthropologist, an implacable theorist of structural violence and health as a human right, and an ethicist for whom the place of social justice in medicine and in the world is an existential need. This book is the platform of interconnected intellectual, academic, and practical engagements upon which the amazing, world-transforming life of Farmer stands."--Arthur Kleinman, author of What Really Matters: Living a Moral Life amidst Uncertainty and Danger "This collection shows the impressive catalytic effects of original scholarship when combined with action, activism, and a commitment to social justice in health. Paul Farmer and his PIH colleagues have twice changed World Health Organization policies; they continue to have a lasting impact on the global health movement and on the lives of the poor.--Peter Brown, Emory University

For nearly thirty years, anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer has traveled to some of the most impoverished places on earth to bring comfort and the best possible medical care to the poorest of the poor. Driven by his stated intent to "make human rights substantial," Farmer has treated patients—and worked to address the root causes of their disease—in Haiti, Boston, Peru, Rwanda, and elsewhere in the developing world. In 1987, with several colleagues, he founded Partners In Health to provide a preferential option for the poor in health care. Throughout his career, Farmer has written eloquently and extensively on these efforts. Partner to the Poor collects his writings from 1988 to 2009 on anthropology, epidemiology, health care for the global poor, and international public health policy, providing a broad overview of his work. It illuminates the depth and impact of Farmer’s contributions and demonstrates how, over time, this unassuming and dedicated doctor has fundamentally changed the way we think about health, international aid, and social justice. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to Partners In Health.

For nearly thirty years, anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer has traveled to some of the most impoverished places on earth to bring comfort and the best possible medical care to the poorest of the poor. Driven by his stated intent to "make human rights substantial," Farmer has treated patients—and worked to address the root causes of their disease—in Haiti, Boston, Peru, Rwanda, and elsewhere in the developing world. In 1987, with several colleagues, he founded Partners In Health to provide a preferential option for the poor in health care. Throughout his career, Farmer has written eloquently and extensively on these efforts. Partner to the Poor collects his writings from 1988 to 2009 on anthropology, epidemiology, health care for the global poor, and international public health policy, providing a broad overview of his work. It illuminates the depth and impact of Farmer’s contributions and demonstrates how, over time, this unassuming and dedicated doctor has fundamentally changed the way we think about health, international aid, and social justice. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to Partners In Health.

"Pathologies of Power" uses harrowing stories of life and death to argue thatthe promotion of social and economic rights of the poor is the most importanthuman rights struggle of our times.

A compelling call to carry God's mercy and compassion to the hurting people of this world This eminently practical book by two leading experts in the field of poverty reduction offers a clear plan to help ordinary Christians translate their compassion into thoughtful action. Authors Peter Greer and Phil Smith draw on their personal experiences t...

Doctor and social activist Paul Farmer shares a collection of charismatic short speeches that aims to inspire the next generation. One of the most passionate and influential voices for global health equity and social justice, Farmer encourages young people to tackle the greatest challenges of our times. Engaging, often humorous, and always inspiring, these speeches bring to light the brilliance and force of Farmer’s vision in a single, accessible volume. A must-read for graduates, students, and everyone seeking to help bend the arc of history toward justice, To Repair the World: challenges readers to counter failures of imagination that keep billions of people without access to health care, safe drinking water, decent schools, and other basic human rights champions the power of partnership against global poverty, climate change, and other pressing problems today overturns common assumptions about health disparities around the globe by considering the large-scale social forces that determine who gets sick and who has access to health care discusses how hope, solidarity, faith, and hardbitten analysis have animated Farmer’s service to the poor in Haiti, Peru, Rwanda, Russia, and elsewhere leaves the reader with an uplifting vision: that with creativity, passion, teamwork, and determination, the next generations can make the world a safer and more humane place.

In this book ethnographic, historical and epidemiologic data are brought to bear on the subject of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in Haiti. The forces that have helped to determine rates and pattern of spread of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) are examined, as are social responses to AIDS in rural and urban Haiti, and in parts of North America. History and its calculus of economic and symbolic power also help to explain why residents of a small village in rural Haiti came to understand AIDS in the manner that they did. Drawing on several years of fieldwork, the evolution of a cultural model of AIDS is traced. In a small village in rural Haiti, it was possible to document first the lack of such a model, and then the elaboration over time of a widely shared representation of AIDS. The experience of three villagers who died of complications of AIDS is examined in detail, and the importance of their suffering to the evolution of a cultural model is demonstrated. Epidemiologic and ethnographic studies are prefaced by a geographically broad historical analysis, which suggests the outlines of relations between a powerful center (the United States) and a peripheral client state (Haiti). These relations constitute an important part of a political-economic network termed the "West Atlantic system." The epidemiology of HIV and AIDS in Haiti and elsewhere in the Caribbean is reviewed, and the relation between the degree of involvement in the West Atlantic system and the prevalence of HIV is suggested. It is further suggested that the history of HIV in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Bahamas is similar to that documented here for Haiti.