Health care advocate Paul Farmer was 'a once-in-a-lifetime person,' says Dr. Fauci
The Partners in Health co-founder died earlier this week in Rwanda
Dr. Paul Farmer's legacy of compassionate and equitable care will continue to transform health care in the world's poorest places for years to come, his colleagues say.
The U.S. physician and public health advocate died unexpectedly in his sleep in Rwanda. He was 62.
"He's a once-in-a-lifetime person," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. top doctor who was a close friend and colleague of Dr. Farmer, told As It Happens host Carol Off.
Dr. Fauci met Farmer when the latter was a student at Harvard University, and the two bonded over a passion for public health. "He referred to me as his mentor when, as a matter of fact, he became a mentor to me," Dr. Fauci said. "Whenever I had questions about, you know, judgments about things that have to do with global health, [the] first person I would call was Paul."
The news of Dr. Farmer's death was shared on Monday by Partners in Health, a global nonprofit organization he co-founded in 1987. The statement said Dr. Farmer suffered an acute cardiac event.
"Paul was a person who felt very deeply the suffering of others and tried very much to not only prevent, but palliate the suffering of others," said Dr. Joia Mukherjee, the chief medical officer at Partners in Health who worked alongside Dr. Farmer for more than two decades.
"It is very hard to lose him right now. But at the same time, we're very grateful for his vision and his prolific writing and teaching that we all can benefit from," she said.
At the time of his death, Dr. Farmer was in Rwanda training medical students at the recently opened University of Global Health Equity. "He went to spend time teaching them at the bedside and enjoyed it so much that he kept prolonging his stay there in Rwanda," Dr. Mukherjee said.
"That is so classical Paul Farmer: bringing quality health care, quality intellectual discussion … to areas of the world where you would have never thought anybody could do that," Dr. Fauci said.
Paul truly saw each and every person as his own family.- Dr. Joia Mukherjee
"And people would tell him, 'Oh, it's impossible; you can't do that.' And Paul's answer was always, 'Watch, I'm going to show you how we can do it.' And he did it."
Health care for all
Dr. Farmer's vision of providing equitable health care dates back to the early 1980s, when he worked with dispossessed Haitian farmers as a student.
He travelled to Haiti after graduating college and witnessed the massive differences in the quality of health care outside of the U.S. "I know that he was broken by that and sought for the rest of his life to remedy that injustice," said Dr. Mukherjee.
Partners in Health began its work in a rural village in Haiti's central plateau, and later expanded its operations to regions including Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America.
Dr. Farmer's work and teachings were informed by the principle of "proximity to suffering," said Dr. Mukherjee.
"Paul truly saw each and every person as his own family," she said. "It's very hard to turn your back on somebody who needs something if you're sitting right next to them, if you get to know them. And once you work in that way, in that proximate way, there's kind of no other way to do the work."
Dr. Mukherjee said that Dr. Farmer's work will live on through the many people he had inspired with his vision for equitable health care.
"I know my team around the world is grieving and people are frightened, you know, losing such an important person to us.
"But to really fulfill his legacy, we have to not fail and we have to keep going and keep transforming what people believe can be done in some of the more difficult places in the world," she said.
Dr. Farmer is survived by his wife, Didi Bertrand Farmer, and their three children.
Written by Olsy Sorokina with files from Reuters and the Associated Press. Interviews with Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Joia Mukherjee produced by Katie Geleff.
