Renowned doctor to speak at EVMS commencement

BOSTON

More than 25 years after his first trip to Haiti, Dr. Paul Farmer still gets angry about what citizens of the island country call "stupid deaths."

These are the deaths that should never happen, the cases in which people living in poverty succumb from diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria that are curable or at least treatable. The cases of fatal complications from something as simple as a foot infection that a pair of shoes could have prevented.

Farmer, who will speak at Eastern Virginia Medical School's graduation on Saturday, has spent his adult life fighting the notion that "there's nothing to be done about it." He rails against the idea that it is somehow acceptable to allow a poor person, whether he or she lives in Haiti or Hampton Roads, to go without treatment for TB, AIDS or cancer for lack of money.

Farmer, a Harvard professor, is co-founder of an international health and social justice organization called Partners in Health. His home base is Boston, but at any given moment he's likely to be treating patients in Haiti, Rwanda, Malawi, Peru or Siberian prisons.

"Paul is succeeding right now because he went where everyone wouldn't go," said Dr. Ralph Ternier, medical director of the local hospital in Belladère, Haiti, and an HIV and TB specialist for Zanmi Lasante, Partners in Health's sister organization in Haiti.

Farmer said his group focuses on partnerships and coordinates with the public sector to reach the most people and have the most enduring impact. In Haiti alone, where Farmer's life's work began, Zanmi Lasante employs hundreds of community health workers who make home visits in the country's poorest region.

To Farmer, who grew up in Florida, the Haitian people aren't just patients, they're friends. Smart, brave, funny friends, too many of whom are hungry and dying.

"People talk about the panic on Wall Street, but it's nothing like the panic of being a parent and not being able to feed your children," he said during a recent interview in Boston. "They've been in economic crisis their whole lives. They know nothing but."

Farmer's work is the subject of a best-selling book, "Mountains Beyond Mountains," by Tracy Kidder. In the global health world, he's something of a rock star - with the most well-informed and socially conscious groupies ever.

At a book signing after a lecture at Trinity Church in Boston's Copley Square, the "small talk" between Farmer and those seeking his autograph was about things such as nursing protocols, how to improve water quality or how his inspiring example changed their lives.

Farmer doesn't act like a rock star. He takes economy flights, and he hates getting stuck in the middle seat just like the rest of us. It's the same attitude that defines his approach to work: He doesn't want your adulation; he wants you to help out.

"This call to service, I've been reading in the American papers that there is more interest in that now," Farmer said. "I think it's great. Go work in a soup kitchen. Go Teach for America. Go read to children. Just the whole stance of having that part of everybody's lives a little bit... I think it's good."

Farmer said that he is sometimes introduced as an example of how one man can make a difference. Flattering, but wrong. If anything, he said, his work has proven "you need a large group of people to get something done."

The danger in people thinking otherwise is that they can become complacent.

"You get a small number of people who say they're experts on anything... and then people feel, 'Well, I don't need to know, there are experts taking care of this,' " Farmer said. "Well, if the experts muck things up, as they often do, what do you do? Then you have trouble because no one can recognize that they're mucking it up. So I just think that the more informed the populace can be, the stronger the democracy can be."

Nancy Young, (757) 222-5559, nancy.young@pilotonline.com