New York Times Features Interview With Paul Farmer on Health Care for World’s Poorest Countries
The New York Times on Saturday interviewed Dr. Paul Farmer, a Harvard Medical School professor and advocate for providing complex treatments to the world's most impoverished people. For 20 years, Farmer has lived and worked in Haiti and has been critical of human rights groups that concentrate more on political rights than basic health care needs. "Civil and political rights are critical but not often the real problem for the destitute sick," Farmer said, adding, "My patients in Haiti can now vote but they can't get medical care or clean water." Farmer said that it is "terrific" that people have started "questioning the logic that complex care can't be provided" to HIV/AIDS patients in resource-poor countries, adding that fewer than 1% of the approximately 30 million individuals living with HIV/AIDS in Africa get "effective therapy" (Cohen, New York Times, 3/29). The complete interview is available online.
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