The life and legacy of Paul Farmer

Physician. Author. Public health pioneer. Who was Paul Farmer? Paul Farmer was born on October 26, 1959, in North Adams, Massachusetts. During his childhood, he and his family moved frequently and lived in unorthodox locations, including a bus and a boat. Farmer graduated from Duke University in 1982 and moved to Cange, Haiti, the following year. He began volunteering in the medical system and was astounded by how inaccessible the hospitals were to the poor. Farmer returned to the United States to attend Harvard Medical School but continued to spend substantial time in Haiti, where in 1985 he established Zanmi Lasante, a community-based health project to provide high-quality care for all. Two years later he cofounded Partners in Health, a public health organization to support the work of Zanmi Lasante and to create similar projects in other impoverished areas, with clinics, schools, and training programs for medical workers. Over the years, what had started as a single clinic in Cange evolved into 16 medical centers across Haiti with a staff of about 7,000 supported by a global organization. Farmer spent substantial time living and working in other resource-poor areas around the world. In 1994 he adopted a community-based model similar to the system in Haiti for Carabayllo, Peru. Farmer also helped open a hospital in Butaro, Rwanda, in a collaboration between the country’s government and Partners in Health. On a personal level, he went to extraordinary lengths to care for his patients, sometimes walking to the homes of patients hours away. Farmer became a household name in the medical community, raising millions of dollars to expand medical systems and authoring 12 books on health, history, and human rights. Paul Farmer died on February 21, 2022, at the age of 62. His tireless humanitarian work remains an inspiration.