After reading the book Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder, and watching an interview from Time Magazine on Paul Farmer, viewers will recognize common themes that Paul Farmer conveys throughout the book and interview. The themes embraced throughout are bringing health care to impoverished nations, spreading awareness of new diseases, and not giving up on the nations or patients. As Paul Farmer pursues to bring health care to impoverished nations, he builds the health care systems, is able to provide services for ones living in poverty, and speaks about the improved health care system in Cuba. While watching Paul Farmer’s interview, he made it clear that giving impoverished nations health care will benefit them all. He says, “Is …show more content…
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 …show more content…
Increasingly, the vision for this health system came from Farmer. (90). He had come up with numerous creations for the town, projects he wanted completed, and the health care system; overall, he wanted Haiti to not be in poverty any longer. Farmer spend countless days and nights finding a way to improve nations, and giving each patient the care they needed, throughout it all, he never gave up on them. From reading Mountains Beyond Mountains and watching the Time Magazine on Paul Farmer, you can tell Farmer is dedicated to his work. He looks at everything in depth and never gives up. He believes that every nation should be able to have health care that can provide for all their people, so they won’t have to be living in poverty. I agree, if a nation is in poverty, countries that aren’t should be willing to help them as much as they can. Farmer is unlike many, his perspective on health justice is extraordinary and more people should think the way he
In the memoir Within Reach: My Everest Story by Mark Pfetzer and Jack Galvin, the author Mark Pfetzer is faced with an extremely amazing yet scary challenge of climbing Mount Everest. Each event is the story has something to do with the nature that is around them at that moment but Pfetzer shows the readers that nature can be a way of life.
He stated that as the society’s technology improves their way of life we seem to forget the significance of the common knowledge about the land. Also he looks down of the competition within the culture that is competing with one another. He despises the fact that some small farmer cannot compete with the bigger farms because small farms lack money, resources and manpower to keep up. All of this replaces the distraction of the farming culture
Singer presents his argument specifically in terms of famine relief and, although it has broader applicability, the discussion mostly falls under this specific topic. Thus, he conforms his argument around aspects relevant to famine and/or poverty when laying out his three core premises.
Having been born and raised in a third world country, I can say with certainty that I have experienced the ravaging effect of poverty and lack of health care providers. I still
book which I was interested in certain parts of it, such as his ideal of wanting
"In nothing do men more nearly approach the gods than in giving health to men," this quote by Cicero perfectly describes what the Cuban medical system is attempting to create, a place in which doctors have a desire and drive to not only help people of wealth and stature but also to help those in vulnerable, poor, communities where payment may not be an option. The time in which doctors are compelled by greed and fiscal selfishness needs to end; Cuba is attempting to do this by instilling a new code of ethics to the doctors that graduate from Cuba's Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM).
Haiti is a prime example of how human needs in one area of the world are interdependent with social conditions elsewhere in the world. Haiti, for most of its history has been overwhelmed with economic mismanage and political violence. While in Haiti Dr. Farmer discovers that his patients live in poverty, filth, pain and famine. Many of the Haitian residents will die young due to diseases or violence, especially when their own doctors are inexperienced and practice medicine in less than savory clinics. How do you deliver quality healthcare to a destitute area of the world when its residence, although may be cured of their disease, will return to no clean running water, an extreme lack of quality food and basic necessitates that majority of us take for granted, no safe shelters from disease carrying insects, and no means to protect themselves from airborne and sexually transmitted diseases. Returning to the same conditions that caused the diseases in the first place, without a change in the environment, can be viewed as a never ending battle.
People like to read about topics that they can relate to, especially because world poverty and starvation are still issues in many impoverished countries. Both of these articles stir up a lot of controversy between people in wealthier nations such as the United States because not everyone is going to be willing to donate ten to twenty percent of their yearly income. I personally believe that it is not my moral obligation to feed the poor and hungry because I have my own life and my loved ones to worry about. I’m not saying we shouldn’t give anything to people in need of help, but there’s just so much you can do to help other people. Singer mentions that organizations like UNICEF and Oxfam America collect money to save the lives of children. Let’s say you donate $200 to one of these organizations. You might be able to help one “sickly 2-year-old transform into a healthy 6-year-old” but what happens after that? Does the 6-year-old child continue to be healthy? What can you do to make sure that your initial donation of $200 benefits the child in the long run? I’m sure you don’t just want to temporarily help a child in need (Singer
Despite the established health care facilities in the United States, most citizens do not have access to proper medical care. We must appreciate from the very onset that a healthy and strong nation must have a proper health care system. Such a health system should be available and affordable to all. The cost of health services is high. In fact, the ...
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
Swartz, K. (2009). Health care for the poor: for whom, what care, and whose responsibility?
He is not only a farmer, but also a writer. He writes about the differences between industrialism and agrarianism. He states these two types of societies are “two nearly opposite concepts of agriculture and land use, but also two nearly opposite ways of understanding ourselves, our fellow creatures, and our world.” He highlights that agrarianism is about the land, plants, and the rest of nature. Industrialism is about high technology machines and increasing profit. He compares industrialism to mining, saying that when used, it only abuses the land (Berry). For Berry, and other agrarianists, farming is so much more than planting and harvesting as quickly as possible. Old traditions are used, and the hard work that is put into the crop, is done so with love. Agrarian societies practice subsistence agriculture, meaning they grow just enough food to support their families. This culture’s practices are done with the goal of being completely
Access to health does not only relate to how available the services are but also how they are delivered at the point of care. People should have access to equity healthcare which means the provision of fair goods and services and opportunities needed for the physical, psychological and spiritual health (McGibbon, Etowa & McPherson, 2008). These health services can be made available through the creation of more public clinics and hospitals. Several studies done in developing countries indicates that introducing medical user fees leads to reducing utilization which tends to affect the poor (CSDH, 2008).
Nearly 50,000 people, including 30,000 children, die each day due to poverty-related problems and preventable disease in underdeveloped Countries. That doesn’t include the other millions of people who are infected with AIDS and other incurable diseases. Especially those living in Sub-Saharan Africa (70%), or “the Third-World,” and while we fight to finish our homework, children in Africa fight to survive without food, or clean water. During the next few paragraphs I will give proof that poverty and disease are the two greatest challenges facing under developed countries.
This area of the world is so foreign to my Oklahoma life; it infuses me with awe, and with an eerie feeling of being strongly enclosed by huge mountains, and the mass of tall trees. However, when my foot first steps onto the dusty trail it feels crazily magical. The clean, crisp air, the new smell of evergreen trees and freshly fallen rain is mixed with fragrances I can only guess at. It is like the world has just taken a steroid of enchantment! I take it all in, and embrace this new place before it leaves like a dream and reality robs the moment. As I turn and look at my family, I was caught by my reflection in their impressions. The hair raising mischief in the car was forgotten and now it was time to be caught up in this newness of life. It was as if the whole world around us had changed and everyone was ready to engulf themselves in it. The trickling of water somewhere in the distance and the faint noise of animals all brought the mountains to