Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder ****

Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder is a hagiography of Paul Farmer, the founder and driving force behind Partners in Health (PIH). Paul Farmer and PIH began in Haiti with the objective of providing free universal health care. From www.pih.org – “Dr. Paul Farmer (1959-2022) co-founded Partners In Health based on the belief that everyone deserves quality health care. Paul cared for the sick, trained generations of clinicians, and transformed health care policies–saving millions of lives and inspiring a movement toward global health equity.”

Paul Farmer built hospitals where conventional wisdom said they would be unsustainable and not cost-effective. He staffed them with local people that he trained. In one year they had two million patient interactions. A similar patient load in the U.S. might have a budget of over one billion dollars. The budget in Haiti was sixteen million!

His public health philosophy included water treatment, nutritional support, and building houses, in addition to medical healthcare.

Before Dr. Farmer, the conventional wisdom was to cure ordinary TB and provide hospice care for those with multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB. Dr. Farmer pushed his philosophy that no life is worth less than another. He drove down the cost of treating MDR and changed the WHO recommendation. He did the same for AIDS.

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