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The story of Dr Paul Farmer, an unconventional American doctor, medical anthropologist and ethnographer as recorded in Mountains beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder is a riveting piece of work; considering it is after all classified as a biography and describes the life and work of an infectious disease specialist dabbling in TB, HIV & AIDS, human rights, international health and a myriad other things.
Twenty years ago, Paul Farmer, then a young doctor met Ophelia Dahl, the daughter of the renowned British author, Roald Dahl, then on a volunteering trip to Haiti. He was 23 and she was 18. Their initial romance did not last but their friendship did and together they founded a rather unconventional charity called Partners in Health.(PIH) Mountains beyond Mountains is as much the story of this charity as much as that of Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl and Jim Yong Kim and their large hearted benefactor Tom White, a unique millionaire with the determination to die practically penniless, giving away his entire fortune way along the way. Now in his eighties, he has largely succeeded in doing this.
A man of Paul Farmer’s eminence as a clinician and an infectious disease specialist with a particular affinity initially for tuberculosis and then for HIV & AIDS would be expected to confine himself to the technicalities of disease control and international public health. But Farmer’s vocabulary includes terms like redistributive justice, preferential options for the poor and published works like Infections and Inequities : The Modern Plague(University of California Press, 2001) and Pathologies of Power : Health, Human Rights and the New War on the Poor ( University of California Press, 2002). Continuing in the same vein, Paul Farmer could then go on to write erudite articles in the Lancet, International Journal of TB and Lung Disease or the Medical Anthropology Quarterly
The PIH vision says it all “At its root, our mission is both medical and moral. It is based on solidarity, rather than charity alone. When a person in Peru, or Siberia, or rural Haiti falls ill, PIH uses all of the means at our disposal to make them well—from pressuring drug manufacturers, to lobbying policy makers, to providing medical care and social services. Whatever it takes. Just as we would do if a member of our own family—or we ourselves—were ill”
This is best illustrated by the story of John, a little boy from Haiti, who was discovered to be suffering from naso pharyngeal cancer and could not be treated in the country. Incurring a cost of close to 20,000 $, the boy was airlifted to the Massachusetts General Hospital for treatment under the world’s best pediatric oncologists. When the boy eventually died, one of his younger staff members brought up the classic cost effectiveness question- the money spent on that one boy who any way died could have saved many other lives. But for Partners in Health, Paul Farmer and his friends, conventional number crunching was not important – saving every life and treating every one who crossed their path was the driver… as Paul Farmer would explain to Tracy Kidder…. People were not numbers and every life was important.
Perhaps the most disturbing element of the book is where Paul Farmer’s philosophy of life – and it is profoundly provoking. As Farmer puts it …… “What we are really trying to do is to make common cause with the losers. We want to be on the winning team, but t the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it is not worth it…… I am not going to stop because we stop losing…..”
The question stares at us … in a culture, society and time where success is every thing and winning every battle counts and tabs are kept of every loss, how many of us can stand up and say that we want to be on the winning team…… but not by selling our souls. Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl and Jim Kim, Tom White and their bunch come through as incredible people who will be an inspiration in any generation. Unlike many charities of this nature, which grow cash rich over the years’ Partners’ in Health hasn’t. Ophelia Dahl, the long time Director reports in her web site that for the first time in twenty years, Partners in Health was not able to raise enough funds to cover the budget for the twelve months ending December 2006. for those looking for a charity to donate, here is a worthy cause.
