I knew I wanted to go into medicine.
I had no idea why.
Haiti made me know why.
Paul Farmer’s that rare person
who connects to a moral truth,
and devotes their entire life
to helping those who need it
and inspiring other people
to come do the same.
There’s this ongoing debate
in global health about,
what is the cheapest intervention we can get
that’ll save the lives of the most people?
I’m so tired of hearing that.
That shouldn’t be the first question we’re asking.
I asked the question,
“What do you do if you’re in a place
like rural, central Haiti,
no electricity, no running water.
Well what if you have acute leukemia?”
And then you heard the litany:
“It’s not cost-effective to treat cancer,
it’s not sustainable, it’s not feasible’’
Every school of public health
teaches public health just the way I’m telling you.
But there’s more to medicine
than saving a million lives at a time.
How about this girl with leukemia in a squatter settlement.
How about somebody save her life?
In Haiti, in Rwanda, his organization goes out
into very tough places
and they bring in doctors from the U.S.
But over time, they are training the local people
and providing levels of health service
that most people would say should be out of reach.
This is going to be a new hospital.
He innovated on how you can help an entire community,
even beyond their health needs.
Instead of having cultural competence,
what we really need is cultural humility.
Because if you have cultural humility,
then you can say, you know what,
I don’t know enough about this place.
In Haiti, Paul learned to speak the local language.
And as we’d go to a new group at the start,
often somebody would give kind of a long thing,
and we’d sit there and wait for him to translate it.
They were almost certainly saying,
“Hey, Dr. Paul, you saved our lives.
It’s incredible. We’re so glad you’re here.
You bring these new medicines, you train people.”
He wasn’t going to pass that along, speaking about himself.
So, he would just say, “Obligatory praise.”
He would want to get to the meat of
what more can we do and let’s hear that.
In 2010 there was absolutely zero
emergency medicine training program in Haiti.
None.
In the years since, every year we’ve graduated
this team of urgent care people.
Most of them are young women,
and I saw them all over southern Haiti.
It was just the most moving thing.
There aren’t many real heroes
where the purity of their commitment
and the way they articulate those values
inspires millions of people.
We’d all aspire to be like that, but very, very few are.
It’s a tragedy that he died young.
I hope Paul’s values and dream stay strong,
even without him here setting such a profound example.
I think once in a while
we’re all guilty of failing to underline
how redemptive, joyous, positive this work is.
If you follow some simple rules
that I learned from the Haitians,
every single one of your endeavors will be met
with some measure of success.
There’s so much uncertainty in terms of outcome,
but not in global health.
If you follow these basic rules,
people are going to get better.
I mean. You gotta love this job.