Mountains Beyond Mountains

Yesterday, I read an interesting (and to me, surprising) news item in New Scientist, which claimed that chronic diseases (heart disease, cancer, and diabetes) are the biggest global killers, far outshadowing infectious diseases as killers of people in low and middle-income countries. Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet opined that “Without concerted and coordinated political action, the gains achieved in reducing the burden of infectious disease will be washed away as a new wave of preventable illness engulfs those least able to protect themselves.”

This revelation in no way takes away from the remarkable work done by Paul Farmer and the organization Partners In Health to combat AIDS and TB in Haiti, Peru, Russia, and other poverty stricken communities around the world. The reason is that Farmer is as much fighting the indecency and inequities of poverty as he is any particular disease.

Tracy Kidder accompanied Farmer on his journeys around the globe in order to write the book, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World. Kidder gives us a portrait of a multidimensional, true-to-life hero, a physician who gives up the cushy life that his Harvard medical school training prepared him for, choosing instead to make a life among people in a poor community who need his help; a man who will take a whole day to walk to an outlying village to treat one or two of his patients; and an anthropologist who appreciates the power of cultural beliefs and practices in combating disease. What I found most inspiring about the story is that Farmer and his colleagues at PIH refused to back down when other global health experts resisted change in favor of the status quo. And that Farmer continued to minister to the needs of his patients when colleagues and friends urged him to turn his attention to broader issues of public health. Acknowledging that this too is important, Farmer has managed to stick with the work (patient care) that brings him personal pleasure and for which he obviously has tremendous gifts.