Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains

519 Words2 Pages

In the book “Mountains beyond Mountains,” Tracy Kidder narrators her adventures in Haiti, following Dr. Paul Farmer. Farmer is a MD who graduated from Harvard Medical school, earned his PhD in anthropology, and is currently on his journey to “cure the world.” When Farmer learned about diseases such as HIV, AIDS, and tuberculosis (TB), that plagued Haiti, he knew he needed to help. Farmer learns Haiti’s native language, Creole, and explores the impoverished towns until he finds the most desolate: Cange. He builds a clinic in Cange, using funding from successful business owner, Tom White, and begins his process of eradicating the most vicious diseases in Cange. Farmer flies back and forth from Brigham Hospital in Boston to Port-au-Prince, Haiti …show more content…

Together, they work to lower prices of medicine, find cures for new strains of TB, open new clinics worldwide, find fund donors such as Partners in Health and the Bill Gates Foundation, and speak at conferences to raise awareness of how impoverished places are plagued with diseases. Diseases like AIDS, HIV, and TB are easily curable if the patient lived in the United States, but since medical care is not as abundant in impoverished places and often more expensive, thousands of people that live in those places die unnecessarily. Farmer works tirelessly to help every single person he can, and he won’t rest until the day he dies. An ancient Haitian proverb says, “Beyond mountains there are mountains,” which means that when you had solved one problem, you couldn’t rest because you had to go on and solve the next. The proverb exceptionally represents Dr. Farmer’s mind-set and relationship with the world. Farmer constantly travels the world participating in clinics, conferences, and meetings, yet he always finds time to go to Haiti. Growing up without having a steady home, Farmer considers Haiti his

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