"Haiti expert shares a vision at Harvard; Paul Farmer says quake opened road to transformation" by James F. Smith, Globe Staff | February 12, 2010
Drawing on 27 years of helping patients in Haiti, Dr. Paul Farmer suggested a treatment plan for post-earthquake Haiti yesterday that could turn the devastation into an opportunity.
First of all, talk like that reminds me of 9/11 and poses more nefarious questions.
And if this guy has been tilling the soil for so long why is Haiti such a mess?
It's almost as if the squalor is intended as a laboratory, no?
It's a terrible thought, but what else explains the misery over so many years when so many good globalists care so much?
In his first public forum since the Jan. 12 quake, Farmer challenged an overflow audience at Harvard Medical School to work with Haitians to attack the impoverishment that made the suffering from the disaster far worse than it needed to be.
“Might addressing the acute needs of the displaced and injured afford us a chance to address the underlying chronic condition?’’ he asked.
Invoking medical metaphors, Farmer described Haiti as an “acute-on-chronic affliction - evident, at last, to the entire world.’’ He said postquake Haiti was “an already bad problem rendered immeasurably worse by the gravest natural disaster to befall this part of the world in centuries.’’
Farmer, cofounder of the Boston-based nonprofit Partners in Health and also a United Nations deputy envoy to Haiti, stopped short of offering a specific treatment plan. He said that is the job of the Haitian people. “How often in medicine have we learned that plans for patients must be, if they are to succeed, made with patients?’’
There is always some agenda-pushing angle associated with my "news," world.
It's the Zionist prism we see the world through here in the States.
But he said institutions in Boston and beyond now have a rare opportunity to not only help Haiti treat its immediate wounds, but also to help generate the longer-term development that Haiti desperately needs.
What took them so long? It takes a catastrophic calamity to motivate them?
Farmer cited several specific challenges for research institutions and the hordes of nongovernmental organizations working in Haiti before and since the quake.
Why were they in such bad shape then?
For example, he said doctors are now seeing cases of tetanus that are “a reminder of the chronic failure to inoculate with an effective, safe vaccine that costs pennies.’’
Ooooooooooh!
I think we $ee what i$ going on now!
They never stop with their damn needles, do they?
*****************************
Farmer also pointed to the crisis of clean water in a country that, one year before the quake, was declared the most “water-insecure’’ nation in this hemisphere....
Just adds to the misery.
Apart from testifying before Congress soon after the quake, Farmer has had few opportunities to speak publicly on what happened in Haiti and what needs to be done.
Like the Globe wouldn't do an interview if he called tham?
As if they would not cover a news conference?
What is with the deception, Glob?
Farmer first worked in Haiti when he was a Harvard medical student in 1983, and he cofounded Partners in Health in 1987. The nonprofit employs about 4,000 people in Haiti, more than half of them community health workers who have built a network of services reaching villages across the Central Plateau. When the quake hit, Partners in Health became the go-to international group for coordinating the emergency medical response.
In part because of Farmer’s personal prominence as a crusader for better health care in Haiti and 10 other countries, Partners in Health has attracted worldwide attention and has raised more than $52 million for earthquake relief and longer-term rebuilding.
The Globe promos haven't hurt.
Harvard’s president, Drew G. Faust, opened the meeting by acknowledging the contributions from across Harvard to the relief effort. She asked those who had done volunteer work in Haiti since the quake to stand up, and more than a dozen people in the hall rose to their feet to applause.
How much of her 775,043 salary did she fork over to help?
She also recognized Farmer’s critical role, as cofounder of Partners in Health as well as chairman of the medical school’s Department of Global Health and Social Medicine and chief of the global health equity unit at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Faust told Farmer: “You were there with an understanding of the context, the culture, and the history that would enable you to be focused and effective amid the chaos all around you, and to bring order out of that chaos.’’
The back-slapping elitism is very distasteful these days, readers -- and a big reason newspapers are dying in AmeriKa.
But in his address, Farmer acknowledged the risks of overstating any doctor’s role. Although he saluted the heroism in Haiti of doctors, nurses, and citizens, he said, “What we need are teams, and above all, systems to deliver services effectively.’’
Farmer said he was reluctant to offer a prognosis on Haiti’s future. Instead, he cited the opinion of two young Haitians he met who answered an old man’s plaint that “Haiti is finished.’’
So the end result is a pile of rubble, huh?
--more--"
And with all the globalists caring so much about Haiti, why not cut 'em a break?
"Given all these hardships, the Haiti government is still obligated to use what little money it has to pay off the debt to international financial institutions, much of it accrued by past dictators. This is money that the government would otherwise likely put toward healthcare and education. Even with the crises of food price inflation, hurricane recovery, and this tragedy, the government of Haiti continues to pay nearly $1 million per week"
Yeah, if the globalists cared so much about Haiti why didn't they dissolve the debt for those poor people?
And let's hope they are not farming organs or other things.
