Paul Farmer (1)Reseñas

Wow, very in-depth look at the West African ebola epidemic of 2014. Very interesting and disturbing reading while the COVID-19 pandemic rages. The book was completed just as the COVID-19 pandemic was ramping up.

Paul Farmer writes about the Ebola epidemic in Western Africa in 1014. His emphasis is on the fact that epidemics of contagious diseases do not occur in a vacuum, but instead are result of social, medical, and economic deficits that provide opportunities for a disease to rage out of control.

After an description of the clinical desert that existed in West Africa at the time of the outbreak, he describes the sequences of events, almost as if in real time. Then he turns to the history of the area, including the extractive colonialism by European countries and slave trading. Colonial rule meant that these areas were raided for people and natural resources, often heavily taxed and with forced labor, with little to no investment in infrastructure such as health care, education, or basic sanitation. Even while expat colonials living in the colony might enjoy these things within their own compounds. Upon gaining freedom, these countries were left destitute and vulnerable to any factions that hungered to rob them of any remaining natural resources.

The theme through the book is the lack of: staff, supplies, space, and systems to provide basic health care. And the hold over of a philosophy of containment of disease over one of providing medical care that arose in the colonial era. This goal of containment of ebola was the dominant approach during the 2014 epidemic, resulting in many needless deaths. Yet, western medical providers who were airlifted out of the region and provided with 21st century medical care survived their ordeal with the disease. The result is a deep distrust of medical authorities within the region.

Farmer also emphasizes the understanding of social medicine in the context of local cultures for the successful delivery of medical care, citing the work of social psychologists and anthropologists.

Finally, it becomes clear that these clinical deserts are likely to contribute to further epidemics and pandemics in the future, unless we as a society work to equalize the availability of staff, stuff, space, and systems to provide medical care through out the world.

The writing reminds me of Sebastian Junger and Frank Snowden, whose works are both cited in this book. There are segments where the author's anger clearly comes through...but it is a righteous anger formed from his life's work of dealing with difficult contagious diseases.

I cannot give this book enough stars. 5 plus stars!!! The author puts the ebola outbreak in historical context. This is important as we need to learn from the history of the material conditions that made this outbreak possible. We can learn much about how to break the chain that leads to pandemics and epidemics and all problems by tracing the chain to what brought us to the point of pandemic. This is not just a history but how to look at history to learn how to go forward and make sure it never happens again. I cannot recommend this very relevant book for today. Dr. Farmer is a scientist, medical doctor and a writer who knows well how to y=use the tools called the written word.

Paul Farmer, a physician and anthropologist with twenty years of experience studying diseases in Haiti, Peru, and Russia, argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the world’s poor is the most important human rights struggle of our times. Farmer challenges conventional thinking within human rights circles and exposes the relationships between political and economic injustice, on one hand, and the suffering and illness of the powerless, on the other.

Paul Farmer is a genius and is worthy of reading by anyone interested in his field of medical anthropology. An MD/PhD professor of Harvard and founder of Partners in Health, Farmer, perhaps better than anyone else alive, embodies the ethic that health care is a human right.

In this book, he writes on his experiences in Haiti. He writes of fighting AIDS and Tuberculosis. He points out that poverty is not only correlated with these diseases but is perhaps a cause. By his broad training, he spans two schools of thought about how to fight these diseases. Poverty must be fought, but so too must the diseases. That is, the diseases synergistically amplify the poverty, and poverty, in turn, amplifies the diseases.

Unfortunately, AIDS (sida in Haiti's Creole language) and TB form a synergy amongst each other that haunts the public health of this island-nation. Farmer's work is laudable as always, and the needless expense of human capital in Haiti at the hands of disease and poverty - yes, infections and inequalities - is an immense tragedy. One wonders how Haiti can prosper. Certainly more Paul Farmers would help.

In January 2010, Haiti experienced a seven-point earthquake that laid waste to an already-struggling infrastructure. The world, for a few moments, paused and sighed a collective, compassionate sigh towards one of the oldest republics in the Western Hemisphere.

Paul Farmer, known for starting Partners in Health and for being deputy ambassador to Haiti from the UN under Bill Clinton, composed this book about his experiences soon after the earthquake. Paul has spent over 30 years serving this island-nation, and he knows it like few outsiders do. He shares these memories in an attempt to provide a chronological diary for the sufferings of this people and to publicize the weight of their journey.

At the conclusion of the book lies several stories from individual Haitians. It is nice to hear their patriotism intermixed with their empathetic sufferings of their fellow citizens. Clinton always raved about how resilient the Haitian people are. They will bounce back. This story - these journeys - tell exactly how this bounce-back will occur. For those interested in being more globally minded, this book is worth a read.

Fantastic.

Paul Farmer is a physician, anthropologist & prophet of social justice. He combines an unflinching moral stance - that the poor deserve health care just as much as the rich do - with scientific expertise & boundless dedication.

A reader that provides a broad overview of Paul Farmer's intellectual, medical and human rights work over the last two-and-a-half decades.

I received this book as an audiobook through the Early Reviewers Program. I don't usually listen to audiobooks, but this particular book lent itself well to the format because I just felt like I was listening to a lengthy NPR piece. It begins with Paul Farmer's account of the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti. He describes the devastation to both physical structures, such as the hospital, and public systems, mainly due to loss of life. He also details efforts to assist the Haitians in the direct aftermath and in the months following the earthquake. One of the most interesting sections deals with a cholera outbreak that occurred several months after the initial disaster. This led to a debate in the international community over whether cholera vaccine administration would be effective or worthwhile. Farmer's assessment of the disaster as an "acute on chronic" situation serves as a warning that the scale of this disaster was not inevitable. Haiti already existed in a chronic disaster state in which public infrastructure could not sufficiently serve the majority of its people. The book continues with a variety of first-hand accounts from Haitians and foreign aid workers. These all lend different perspectives to the disaster and recovery. The overarching theme is that the international community must help Haiti to "build back better" and that this is probably best accomplished by direct assistance to Haiti's government for specific items such as teacher's salaries. The old Haiti, an underdeveloped country with a hodgepodge of uncoordinated NGOs running many of the social services, was clearly a disaster waiting to happen.

Haiti After the Earthquake was an interesting listen (I was given the audiobook version). It's a very in depth look at Haiti and what happened before and after the earthquake of 2010. Most interesting to me was a peek inside Haiti's political structure and how that affected the people of Haiti during the aftermath of this great disaster. The author also brings in a number of familiar faces and "big names" to try and bring awareness to the problem. It's a great marketing technique - who doesn't love Meryl Streep? - but it also is a bit deceptive as she does not read the majority of this book.

Still, with a bit of restructuring, this book has a lot of potential. All the information is there, it just needs a bit of rearranging and pairing down. (The book is a little overly long in some places.)

Side note: Kudos to the distributors of this book. I received my copy pretty much as soon as I won it from LT's Early Reviewers Program.

Paul Farmer is very dedicated to his role as Deputy Special Envoy for Haiti and Partners in Health and it shows. Unfortunately, it feels like this book was a little rushed and more like a personal diary than I would have liked. The first 2/3 of the book were written by Farmer where he goes through descriptions of many meetings and throws out a lot of names. There were interesting chapters discussing Haiti's history and politics mixed into the details about the earthquake and some of the aftermath. The better part of the book was at the end with essays from Haitians and other people involved. I would like to hear from more of those people. It is an interesting book but gets bogged down in too many unnecessary details.

One other minor complaint: the cover of the audiobook says that Meryl Streep reads the book. She reads a few of the essays at the end but not the majority of the book (the portion written by Paul Farmer).½

Haiti After The Earthquake is filled with information about the problems that have plagued Haiti’s infrastructure for years, and how that plays out tragically after the earthquake. While I do feel like I learned a lot about Haiti’s history, and also got a good sense of the horrific atmosphere in Port-Au-Prince after the earthquake, I only made it through five hours of this fourteen-hour audiobook before I gave up.

For someone who is interested in foreign policy and the infrastructure of Haiti’s government and the lack of services for their citizens, there is a lot of information here, it’s just not arranged in a manner that held my attention. I feel bad giving this book a low rating because I think that the information itself is so important, but this was just a depressing subject that dragged on and on. I began to dread listening to this book, in part because it seemed to be repetitive, at least until it got into the history of Haiti, which was the part that held my attention because it had a solid framework and direction – a beginning, middle and end. With the rest of the book (the parts that I listened to) it was hard to tell which direction the book was going to go. I really did want to see if there was improvement for the people of Haiti, but I just couldn’t force myself to listen to another nine hours.

Also, the audiobook says that it’s narrated by Meryl Streep, which is very misleading. Most of the book is narrated by a man who has a nice deep voice that is pleasant to listen too, but the billing on the front of the audiobook should reflect that. (I have read elsewhere that Meryl Streep reads an essay near the end of the book.)

If you have an overwhelming interest in Haiti then you might want to listen to this audiobook. The narrator was pleasant to listen to, but the organization of the material left a lot to be desired.

Paul Farmer has written another in depth book that should be a must read for anyone interested in global human affairs and Haiti in particular. Farmer is an inspirational human being who has dedicated his life to serving the medical needs of the Haitian people. After spending so many years working in the field as a doctor Paul Farmer also became involved in international politics working alongside Bill Clinton with the goal to help improve the country's economical and social condition.

Most people are aware of the earthquake that shook Haiti in early 2010 but only few understand the lasting impact that this disaster had on the country and its people. Farmer does an excellent job summarizing the current state of affairs as well as delving deep into the history of this poor country. Farmer's main focus in this book is the "Building Back Better" goal for Haiti and he goes into great detail on how to achieve this. He also reminds us of the importance of helping the Haitian people to help themselves and strengthening the country from the inside out.

There are several Haitian guest writers who contributed personal essays about their experience and those help to make the whole situation more vivid and less stuffy and academic. I really enjoyed listening to the original voices on the audio book edition.

Overall, it's a long read but you learn a lot and this book will definitely leave a lasting impression.

This audiobook describes the acute on chronic disaster that occurred with the Haitian earthquake. The infrastructure was inadequate prior to the earthquake. Much of it was destroyed by the earthquake. This book chronicles the neglected story of Haiti - its history, its fortitude in the midst of recurrent disasters, and ill-conceived attempts to help - both individually and by governments. Partners in Health was founded to bring modern health care to the rural majority. The book recounts the history of this NGO and the progress made in Haitian health as a result. The book shares the aftermath of the earthquake in a somewhat chronological manner ending at about the one year anniversary. The book is inspiring, sad, and a testament to the ability to rise above any kind of tragedy.

I have always respected Paul Farmer and his tireless, selfless medical work in Haiti since I first read about him in Tracy Kidder’s book, Mountains Beyond Mountains. So I was thrilled to receive an audio version of Haiti After the Earthquake by Paul Farmer from the publisher.

I have now learned, after listening to fourteen hours (yes, that’s fourteen hours!) of these CDs that just because you are a wonderful human being, you are not necessarily a wonderful writer. I learned more about Haiti that I ever wanted to know. I learned more about humanitarian efforts to improve an impoverished country than I ever wanted to know. It took everything I had in me to put that next CD into the player and listen for another hour. I felt like I’d signed up for a marathon when I’d meant to sign up for a quick run around the park.

I will say that I found the short pieces at the end of the set of CDs to be a refreshing change. These pieces were compelling and personal. In fact, if you are interested in Haiti, I’d advise you to skip to the end and listen to the short pieces only.

I've been eying this book on the library new bookshelf for awhile. Paul Farmer, as well as his work for Partners in Health, was the subject of Tracy Kidder's book Mountains Beyond Mountains, and the earthquake had a personal connection in its effect on my aunt's process of adopting a Haitian orphan. But the book was too long to read in two weeks, so when it was offered through the Early Reviewers program I was really excited to receive this audio copy.

In this book, Paul Farmer - now UN Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti under former president Bill Clinton - details his experiences in the first year after the earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince on January 12, 2010. The majority of the book, 8 CDs in the audio version, is his point of view, but includes copious quotes from colleagues and friends affected as well. Dr. Farmer's involvement was more on a political level than anything else, so while he does include some stories of individuals affected by the quake, he focuses much of his narrative on "building back better," and the political policies that he believes will affect change in Haiti. I did not find this as personally interesting, nor did I agree entirely with his underlying assumption that the public sector is the best way to provide certain services.

Dr. Farmer's text is read not by Meryl Streep as the packaging would suggest, but Eric Conger, who does a good job of keeping the narration flowing and making it clear when he is quoting someone else. Since this was a full-cast audio, I half expected quotes from other people to be delivered by other voices, but this is not the case. Instead, each essay at the end - written by various people including Edwidge Danticat, Nancy Dorsinville, Timothy T. Schwartz, and Dr. Farmer's wife Didi - are read by the cast. I particularly liked the narration by the Haitian authors themselves: Edwidge Danticat reading her essay made me want to read her fiction. Because these three narrators' renditions were slower, I found it hard to follow entirely on audio and supplemented by reading the book at the same time. But I loved the individuality and nuance it brought to their essays, and loved being able to hear the Haitian Creole phrases and sentences the way they should sound (for the record, it sounds similar to French, but I wouldn't have guessed that from the spelling). While in some ways this book wasn't what I expected, I am glad I read it, and I will pass it on to my aunt who, I think, will appreciate it even more than I did.½

The problems of Haiti are multitude and begin before the quake and probably don't have a complete solution at any time in the future. Dr. Paul Farmer has been visiting and working in Haiti a long time, not just because of the earthquake and has many insights into the problems and some of their causes. This book addresses these in great detail.

Dr. Farmer is an amazing person who has been entrusted with many gifts--intelligence, a good education, great jobs, positions of influence and power, energy, language ability, to name a few. I didn't feel like he was bragging about himself in anyway as he told the story of Haiti and his involvement there as a medical doctor with a medical NGO and special envoy for the U.S. government. His viewpoint is socialist and this comes through very clearly.

I would have liked to have heard more stories of how the quake affected the lives of Haitians and less about the political side of things, but I suppose that must be told as well, especially for certain audiences.

To say the book is read by Meryl Streep is a means of selling this audio version. Most of it is read by a male reader, which fits well as the voice of Paul Farmer. Ms. Streep has a minor part and some Haitians read as well. They speak English with an accent and slowly for obvious reasons and that can make one impatient.

I had a lot of interest in the book because my husband will be traveling there in December for his work, but even with that, I had trouble forcing myself to finish listening.½

I first learned about Dr. Paul Farmer's work in Haiti in Tracy Kidder's book [Mountains Beyond Mountains]. Farmer is one of the founders of Partners in Health, a charitable foundation that works to bring health care to poor regions, including Haiti. Taking advantage of Famer's 20+ years of experience in Haiti, Bill Clinton named Farmer as the United Nations Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti in 2009. When a massive earthquake hit Haiti on January 12, 2010, Farmer rushed to lend his medical and political support to the recovery efforts. This book, written a little over a year after the earthquake, provides Farmer's insights about the impact of the earthquake and the initial recovery efforts. He also describes how the history of Haiti and the country's economic status at the time of the earthquake amplified the effects of the natural disaster. Farmer also uses the book to stimulate discussion about how Haiti might use the earthquake as an opportunity to Build Back Better.

I very much enjoyed this book. I learned a lot about Haiti, its history, its challenges, and its strengths. I was also interested in Farmer's perspective on the roles of both governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the wake of a natural disaster. Parts of the book were heartbreaking, with vivid descriptions of the suffering that occurred as a direct result of the earthquake and the suffering that continued to reverberate throughout Haiti many months later. Other parts were more academic, providing insight into the challenges of development. Although the audio version of the book was quite well done, I might have preferred to have read some of the denser parts myself, so that I could refer back as needed.

In addition to Farmer's perspectives on Haiti, the book concludes with a number of chapters by others who were in Haiti at the time of the earthquake or who were impacted by it. One of my favorite of these chapters was written by Edwidge Danticat, a truly gifted author who used the poetry of her language to reach my heart as well as my head.

As I anticipated, "Haiti After the Earthquake" by Paul Farmer was difficult to listen to because of the extent of the human losses, infrastructure destruction, and lack of answers. Farmer provides a complex view of Haiti, not only including the earthquake itself, but the history and social conditions that led to the resulting damage and difficulty in providing humanitarian assistance. Along with Farmer, several other individuals provide their insight, providing focused and varied analyses. Because of their focus and different viewpoints, I found the essays to be more useful in getting a sense of the overall situation.

Due to the audiobook format and its lack of a table of contents, I found it difficult for me to get a feeling for where I was in the book. A listing of the authors and narrators in the order they appeared would have helped me.

I listened to the audiobook version. In general, I found the book interesting, but too long and somewhat repetitive. I vastly preferred reading about Dr. Farmer in Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder.

The cover of the audiobook highlights Meryl Streep as a reader, but the first 8 CDs of 11 (the part written by Paul Farmer) were read by someone else. The last few CDs were essays by Haitians. Streep read hers well, but on these last few CDs there were also Haitian readers with heavy accents who spoke too slowly, which I found cumbersome.

Pathologies of Power, written before "tè tranble" (the trembling of the earth) provides both global health experts and lay readers alike with gripping first hand accounts of this remarkable doctor's work in Haiti, Africa and the United States. Farmer, an eloquent Harvard Medical School professor, describes his work providing medical care in some of the most neglected and abused populations on earth. Pathologies opens up a broad landscape to navigate regarding possibilities for global health workers and allied professionals. Those interested in alleviating the pain by those who are effected by disease, lack of nutrition, and horrific political and economic circumstances will find Farmers book a useful tool in identifying problems they will encounter in their work.

Originally released in the early 1990s after the first coup again Jean-Bertrand Aristide, The Uses of Haiti gives an overview of the country's history and how it has been systematically denied status and any true democracy. It explains eloquently why the country has often been ruled by dictators, the simple answer being that they were funded and trained by countries like the United States. Farmer, a doctor who has treated Haiti's poorest people since the early 1980s, then tells three stories of patients and relatives of patients and how they have each suffered from the way Haiti has been abused. Whether through health (hint, Haiti didn't spawn AIDS, it came to the country from the north), torture, or death. it's something of a miracle that Haiti still exists as a country and speaks to the enduring spirit of her people.
Updated in the early 2000s, we learn not that much had changed. Since the book was published, Aristide was again elected president, and again removed under questionable circumstances.
If you want to get a sense of what the country has endured, read this book. Especially now after the earthquake, I can only imagine things are still at least like this.

The first part of the book could be called 'A People's History of Haiti' since it so resembles the intent and style of Howard Zinn's wonderful classic 'People's History of the United States.' The second part of the book tells personal stories that raise further debate questions about what exactly is the truth, what should US policy be towards Haiti. I found this part not quite so illuminating as the history chapters. The overall effect is part much needed alternative perspective on Haiti, and part polemic. An introduction by Howard Zinn (rest in peace) would have been so much more meaningful and hard hitting than Chomsky could ever be.

I bought this book after a discussion here on LT of the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake and Dr. Paul Farmer, the author, who is the founder of Partners in Health as well as the subject of Mountains beyond Mountains.

It is powerful, moving, and difficult-to-read: difficult to read both because of the human suffering depicted in its pages and because parts of it are quite a slog and somewhat repetitive. Dr. Farmer's basic arguments in the book are that health is a human right, but has not been treated as such by traditional human rights organizations; that poor people experience "structural violence" which makes them more likely to be sick, injured, etc., than people with more money; that poor sick people are better able to describe their needs than "experts;" that, following liberation theology, there should be a positive preference towards the poor, rather than the wealthy; and that very often treatments that are known not to work (e.g., anti-TB drugs that don't work on patients with multiple drug-resistant TB) are used for poor people (e.g., in Russian prisons) because the drugs that would work are deemed "not cost-effective."

The first part of the book, in which Farmer uses his experiences in Haiti, Chiapas, Guantanamo (this book was written pre-9/11 and the US prisons for suspected terrorists there, and deals with Haitians with AIDS who were imprisoned there, contrasted with AIDS treatment in Cuba), and Russia is the most compelling because Farmer is able to draw his principles from real experiences. The second part, which is more theoretical -- Farmer is both a doctor and an anthropologist -- is harder to read and for me less interesting.

This book certainly has led me to think differently about traditional foreign aid and the traditional way "donor nations" treat poorer countries. And, another outstanding aspect of the book is the many quotes from poets and other writers.