Paul Farmer was born in Massachusetts in 1959, went to Harvard Medical School, became a doctor, and ended up living and working in Haiti. He co-founded an organization in 1987 called Partners in Health (PIH). The philosophy behind the organization is that everyone, no matter who or where has a right to health care. Paul Farmer and PIH have already made amazing progress in Haiti, Peru, and several other countries, helping people get the care they need. PIH’s website lists a detailed history of they and Farmer’s work in Haiti. When Paul Farmer first came to Cange, Haiti as a medical student in 1983, the place was in shambles. In 1956, a dam was built on the Artibonite River, flooding the village and forcing the residents to move up into the hills. Many of these displaced villagers were still essentially homeless after nearly thirty years, and had little access to quality health care. With the founding of the Zanmi Lasante clinic later in 1983, Farmer and his friend Ophelia Dahl set the people of Cange on the road to recovery by providing access to doctors, medicine, and emergency care, all completely free. (“Partners”) One of Farmer’s focuses was on tuberculosis (TB) and has had much success on this front. Through new studies and methods such as active case finding and community health workers, as well as his work with multidrug-resistant TB, Paul Farmer has revolutionized treatment of tuberculosis in Haiti and around the world.
Paul Farmer designed several studies that he used to help create new TB treatment methods, including a study about a system called active case finding, which helps find TB cases more quickly. The previous system of tuberculosis case finding is known as passive case finding. Passive case finding is when tu...
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...y done in Haiti about community health workers.
"Partners in Health History." Partners In Health. Web. 5 Dec. 2011. This article describe’s PIH’s history in regards to its founding and work in Haiti and other countries.
"Stories - Peru Journal - Part 2: Diseases of the Poor — International Reporting Project.” Web. 8 Dec. 2011. This article provides the population count of Carabayllo in 1994.
"Tuberculosis -Factsheets - What Is DOTS." WHO SEAR, Regional Health Situation, and World AIDS Day, Health Report. World Health Organization. Web. 16 Nov. 2011. This fact sheet describes the DOTS protocol used to treat tuberculosis.
"Tuberculosis Treatment Success Rate Under DOTS, Percentage." UNStats Millennium Indicators. United Nations, 7 July 2011. Web. 16 Nov. 2011. This data sheet shows the percentage of tuberculosis treatment successes under DOTS by country.
...in the Twentieth Century”. American Journal of Public Health. May 2010. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2853635/. Web. 8 April 2014.
Duke University Meical Center. (2004). Physician Assistant History Center - Timeline. Retrieved June 17, 2011, from Physician Assistant History Center: http://www.pahx.org/timeline.html
According to World Health Organization, the statics show that: - The world needs 17 million more health workers, especially in Africa and South East Asia. - African Region bore the highest burden with almost two thirds of the global maternal deaths in 2015 - In Sub-Saharn Africa, 1 child in 12 dies before his or her 5th birthday - Teenage girls, sex workers and intravenous drug users are mong those left behind by the global HIV response - TB occurs with 9.6 million new cases in 2014 - In 2014, at least 1.7 billion people needed interventions against neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) (“Global Health Observatory data”, n.d.) B. A quote of Miss Emmeline Stuart, published in the article in
Goldberg, Rachel. "Inequality and Health Care in Peru." MedLife. MedLife, 27 Dec. 2012. Web. 15 Apr. 2014. .
While practically every health indicator has improved in Peru in the past thirty years, these improvements have not been distrusted equally across the population. Most of the progress has occurred in urban areas, especially in the capital city of Lima, with the rural population lagging behind. It is easy to assume that all of the disparity results from the poverty that exists in the region According to the Population Reference Bureau (2015), the amount of people living below the poverty line is 36% higher in rural areas than in urban areas. While poverty is definitely a causative factor in the disparities that exist, in this paper I will examine some of these inequalities and show that the geographical isolation of many rural communities is
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infection that can attack any part of the body, but it is normally found in the lungs (Huether, McCance, Brashers and Rote, 2008,). TB is an infection caused by a acid-fast bacillus also know as Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Huether et al. 2008) It is one of the leading causes of death in Asia, China, Indian, Indonesia and Pakistan (Huether et al. 2008). These countries show that in most cases the incidence rate is highest in young adults, and are usually the result from re-infection in recent infections. The spread of TB is attributed to the emigration of infected people from high-prevalent countries, substance abuse, poverty, transmission in crowd places, and the lack of proper medical care for the infected individuals (Huether et al. 2008).
Farmer is dedicated to his work and would do anything in his power to help. Belinda Luscombe, from Time Magazine, describes during the interview how Farmer helped a man who was having an asthmatic attack. He only had his inhaler with him, but it was enough to save the man’s life. The next day he came to Farmer and praised on him for saving his life. This is just one example of many how Farmer would do anything to help someone in need. Farmer gives each of his patient’s individual care, letting them all know he cares. Kidder tells, “Farmer lingers beside the crib of a little girl with wasted arms and a torso bloated by pleural effusion—caused by extrapulmonary TB. She lies on her side. He reaches in and strokes her shoulder, saying softly, almost singing, in English, ‘Michela wants to give up, but we’re not going to let her, are we? No, we’re not going to let her.’” (31). The way Farmer gives each patient individual care, it lets them know that there is hope they will get better, and that he cares and will do anything he can to help them. Farmer also had hope that Haiti would finally change one day. Kidder
...Department of Health and Human Services of United States proposed a goal to completely abolish tuberculosis from the Earth by 2010. However, several Missouri counties have stated tuberculosis' recent rise and saying it still is a threat as it is airborne and infectious; tuberculosis will persist to be a peril to humanity (Nochlin, 2010). People still need to defeat various obstacles to reach that goal as AIDS and TB are cooperating to kill victims faster as well as intensifying the dangers of certain TB. Different parts of the world are also in danger, including India and Africa and Africa is particularly in great danger. Twenty-five million there are HIV-positive and 200 million are infected with inactive TB (Zimmerman, 2003). Certainly, these statistics forecast an inevitable massacre and the white death may become the greatest health disaster in human history.
All four countries are undergoing an epidemiologic transition as treatment and control of infectious diseases continues to improve. However, the major issues that affect each country and how the country has responded to their problems are vastly different. It is funny, but in the midst of writing this reflection, I somehow found myself in a conversation with someone who was horrified by the quality of healthcare in “third world” countries. This assumption that poor countries have horrendous quality of healthcare is not uncommon. Fortunately, these assumptions are wrong. Though developing countries are facing the unique problem of operating a healthcare system in an environment with inadequate resources and public health infrastructures, they have managed to develop incredible solutions. In Latin America and the Caribbean, a combination international and national interventions has been so successful that these countries have the highest percentage of ART coverage in any low-to-middle-income countries (Garcia et al., 2014). Cuba’s WHO health ranking is 39, approximately the same as the U.S. and achieved at a fraction of the price. As countries shift into the third epidemiologic transition, many of the basic systems for obtaining medications and seeing health care professionals are already in place. These four have taken the first important step and declared that healthcare is a right for all, something that even the U.S. has failed to do. Though they must continue building upon their current infrastructure, they have the advantage of hindsight and seeing what has worked in other countries. As we have seen during our study of the U.S. and other OECD countries, there is no one perfect health system. However, I am confident that the health systems that emerge from these developing countries will be one that works for the
Alas, his bravery and belief in equality led to the creation of Partners in Health, an organization that treats AIDS and multiple drug-resistant tuberculosis and trains community based medical employees in 12 underdeveloped areas. Partners in Health began with employment below half a dozen, yet has grown to having beyond 15,000 employees. This growth has much to do with Paul Farmer's resilience in spreading awareness of the need to stop the outbreak of multiple drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR), though during his time as an advocate all he wanted to do was treat patients in Haiti. Throughout his entire novel, Kidder tells of Farmer's struggles to balance his desire for world-round acknowledgement of the devastating effect MDR could have on the population and his wish to spend his days treating patients in Cange, Haiti. Paul Farmer is truly a philanthropist in the rawest definition of the word. Kidder writes, “'That's when I feel most alive,' he told me once on an airplane, 'When I'm helping people,'”
Entering the 21st. Century – World Development Report 1999/2000. World Bank 2000. Oxford University Press. New York, NY 2000.
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