Paul Farmer, an American health practitioner and professional medical anthropologist renowned for his innovative operate in furnishing overall health care to poorer nations around the world, died Monday at age 62, his nonprofit team Associates in Health said.
The Boston-primarily based firm reported he “unexpectedly passed absent nowadays in his snooze when in Rwanda.”
“Paul Farmer’s loss is devastating, but his vision for the planet will dwell on through Associates in Overall health,” the group’s CEO Dr. Sheila Davis explained in a statement. “Paul taught all those people all around him the electric power of accompaniment, enjoy for a person one more, and solidarity.”
Farmer’s get the job done on furnishing overall health care methods to poorer nations around the world brought him broad acclaim. A 2003 e-book profiling him, “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” referred to as him “the man who would cure the planet.”
Tributes to Farmer’s legacy poured in on social media from all around the entire world.
Samantha Electrical power, the previous U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, tweeted that Farmer was “a large” in his subject.
“Devastating news,” she posted. “Paul Farmer gave everything — everything — to other individuals. He observed the worst, and however did all he could to convey out the finest in everyone he encountered.”
“It is challenging to overstate the effect Dr. Paul Farmer experienced on the healthcare occupation,” pulmonologist and health-related analyst Dr. Vin Gupta tweeted
“This is beyond devastating. Paul was a hero, a mentor and a friend,” Brown University’s Dr. Ashish K. Jha tweeted. “He taught us what world wide wellbeing need to be and motivated all of us to do improved.”
And actor Edward Norton, a social and environmental activist, referred to as Farmer “a single of the most loving, amusing, generous & inspiring folks to grace humanity with his soul in our lifetimes.”
Doing the job in Haiti in 1987, Farmer co-launched Companions in Health to enable devise and deliver better wellbeing care in lousy and badly underserved nations around the world.
A co-founder and shut longtime affiliate was Jim Yong Kim, who went on to guide the Earth Financial institution from 2012 to 2019. In 2009, Farmer succeeded Kim as chair of the Department of World-wide Health and fitness and Social Medication at Harvard Clinical College. The exact same year he was named a UN deputy distinctive envoy to Haiti, doing the job with Invoice Clinton.
Farmer held that position at the time of the island’s devastating 2010 earthquake, and quickly was headed to Haiti on an airplane total of physicians.
Farmer, a lifelong advocate for the lousy Caribbean nation, co-started the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and labored with neighborhood leaders to open a modern day instructing hospital in Mirebalais, in central Haiti, in 2013.
He talked with CBS Information chief professional medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook about the task in 2012, when the clinic was however underneath construction.
“We want to be ready to say, just when, that the excellent of care we are giving to folks dwelling in abject poverty is as great as if they ended up born in some ritzy component of Manhattan, say. That eyesight of fairness and justice and decency is what we’d like to give start to,” Farmer mentioned.
“What a crushing loss,” LaPook stated Monday.
Farmer was editor in main of the journal Wellbeing and Human Rights, and wrote thoroughly on the juncture of those two fields.
Farmer was also chief of the division of International Overall health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Clinic, in Boston, Massachusetts.
He, Kim and an additional Companions in Wellness co-founder, Ophelia Dahl — daughter of British writer Roald Dahl and American actress Patricia Neal — are showcased in a 2017 documentary, “Bending the Arc.”
In addition to Rwanda and Haiti, Companions in Wellbeing functions in Kazakhstan, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mexico, Peru, Russia and Sierra Leone, as perfectly as in Navajo communities in the United States.
Farmer was married to Didi Bertrand Farmer, a Haitian professional medical anthropologist.
In 2008, Farmer invited “60 Minutes” to central Haiti, wherever he learned his life’s do the job. The invitation meant a a few-hour, jaw clenching, tooth rattling trip on an unpaved road from the funds town to the healthcare facility. View the video clip under: