Health Care Activist Opens Speaker Series

Dr. Paul Farmer, an activist for improving medical care for the poor, visited Harvard last night to explain to students about his work in impoverished communities around the world.

The speech, entitled "Partners in Health: Can Pragmatic Solidarity Improve Health Outcomes Among the Poor," attracted an audience of more than 50 students.

It marked the beginning of a speaker series sponsored by the Harvard Project for International Health and Development (HPIHD), a student group started this semester.

Farmer, associate professor of Social Medicine at the Medical School, described his work with medical programs in Haiti, Peru, Mexico and Roxbury, Mass.

"I was trying to engage the Harvard community in a critical reflection on the nature of health and inequality in the world today," Farmer said.

Farmer spoke extensively about Partners in Health (PIH), a non-profit organization he co-founded a decade ago.

"Our goal is to provide medical services to people living in poverty," Farmer said. "We are also asking the fundamental question of why people living in poverty are poor."

"We are trying to redress inequalities of outcome through pragmatic projects that respond to real need," he said.

The programs developed by PIH focus on issues such as treating tuberculosis, finding clean food and water sources and addressing children's health-care needs, according to Farmer.

Farmer criticized the results of several development efforts. Projects designed to modernize Third World countries sometimes have disastrous consequences for the people living in them, he said.

"In Haiti, we're working with peasants who lost their land to a hydroelectric dam," Farmer said. "How do these ideas that sound so good get perverted and end up harming people living in poverty?"

PIH tries to be very involved with the communities in which it works, Farmer said.

"We're a community-based organization," Farmer said. "We're not a large bureaucratic system that can give some output of what you want. We deal with people's personal problems."

The audience responded enthusiastically to the speech, asking questions and lingering to speak personally with Farmer.

"I liked what he had to say," said Cristina M. Delgadillo '99.

Other students also expressed support.

"What they are doing is very consistent with my approach to medicine," said Humphrey Wattanga '96.

But other students questioned parts of Farmer's argument.

"I agree with a lot of what he said about the development model he's using, but it doesn't give enough credit to many developmental organizations," said Mediha Murshed '98.

Overall, many were impressed with his presentation.

"It was very enlightening," said Amy L. Beck '00. "It made me see another angle. I'd never really heard people criticize developmental health."