Paul Farmer, American physician and global health care pioneer, dies at 62

Paul Farmer, an American physician and medical anthropologist known for his groundbreaking work in providing health care to the poorest countries, died Monday at the age of 62, his nonprofit group Partners in Health said.

The Boston-based organization said he “died unexpectedly today while sleeping while in Rwanda.”

“The loss of Paul Farmer is devastating, but his vision of the world will last through Partners in Health,” said the group’s CEO, Dr. Sheila Davis, in a statement. “Paul taught everyone around him the power of companionship, love for one another, and solidarity.”

Farmer’s work in providing health care solutions to the poorest countries gave him great recognition. A 2003 book outlining him, “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” called him “the man who would heal the world.”

Tributes to Farmer’s legacy reached social media around the world.

Samantha Power, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, tweeted that Farmer was “a giant” in her field.

“Devastating news,” he posted. “Paul Farmer gave everything, everything, to others. He saw the worst, and yet he did his best to bring out the best in everyone he met.”

“It’s hard to overstate the impact that Dr. Paul Farmer had on the medical profession,” tweeted pulmonologist and medical analyst Dr. Vin Gupta.

“This is more than devastating. Paul was a hero, a mentor and a friend,” said Dr. Ashish K. Jha of Brown University. he tweeted. “It taught us what global health should be like and inspired us all to do better.”

And actor Edward Norton, a social and environmental activist, said Farmer is “one of the most loving, fun, generous and inspiring people to grace humanity with his soul in our lives.”

Working in Haiti in 1987, Farmer co-founded Partners in Health to help devise and provide better health care to poor and underserved countries.

Jim Yong Kim was a longtime co-founder and close partner, who headed the World Bank from 2012 to 2019. In 2009, Farmer succeeded Kim as President of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. . In the same year he was appointed UN Special Envoy to Haiti, working with Bill Clinton.

Farmer held that position at the time of the island’s devastating 2010 earthquake, and soon headed to Haiti in a plane full of doctors.

Farmer, a lifelong advocate for the poor Caribbean nation, co-founded the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and worked with local leaders to open a modern teaching hospital in Mirebalais, in central Haiti, in 2013.

He spoke with CBS News chief medical officer Dr. Jon LaPook about the project in 2012, when the hospital was still under construction.

“We want to be able to say, just once, that the quality of care we are giving to people living in extreme poverty is as good as if they were born in a privileged area of ​​Manhattan, for example. This vision of equity and justice, and decency is what we would like to give birth to, “Farmer said.

“What an overwhelming loss,” LaPook said Monday.

Farmer was editor-in-chief of Health and Human Rights magazine and wrote extensively on the conjunction of these two fields.

Farmer was also head of the global health equity division at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.

He, Kim, and another co-founder of Partners in Health, Ophelia Dahl, daughter of British writer Roald Dahl and American actress Patricia Neal, appear in a 2017 documentary, “Bending the Arc.”

In addition to Rwanda and Haiti, Partners in Health works in Kazakhstan, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mexico, Peru, Russia and Sierra Leone, as well as the Navajo communities in the United States.

Farmer was married to Didi Bertrand Farmer, a Haitian medical anthropologist.

In 2008, Farmer invited “60 Minutes” to downtown Haiti, where he discovered the work of his life. The invitation meant a three-hour walk, with its jaw clenched and its teeth, on an unpaved road from the capital to the hospital. Watch the video below:

In:
• Paul Farmer
• obituary