The Ebola outbreak, which is the largest in history that we know about, is merely a reflection of the public health crisis in Africa, and it’s about the lack of staff, stuff and systems that could protect populations, particularly those living in poverty, from outbreaks like this or other public health threats.
Paul Farmer is one of the world’s most respected medical anthropologists and physicians. If you missed this in-depth interview with him on Democracy Now, and cannot view the video, here’s a link to the transcript.
Dr. Farmer and his colleagues in the U.S. and abroad have pioneered novel, community-based treatment strategies that demonstrate the delivery of high-quality health care in resource-poor settings in the U.S. and other countries. Their work is documented in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, The Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, Clinical Infectious Diseases, and Social Science and Medicine.
Dr. Farmer also has written extensively on health and human rights, about the role of social inequalities in the distribution and outcome of infectious diseases, and about global health. His most recent book, Reimagining Global Health, co-edited with three colleagues, presents a distillation of several historical and ethnographic perspectives of contemporary global health problems. Other titles include To Repair the World: Paul Farmer Speaks to the Next Generation, a collection of short speeches, Partner to the Poor: A Paul Farmer Reader, Pathologies of Power, Infections and Inequalities, The Uses of Haiti, and AIDS and Accusation. In addition, Dr. Farmer is co-editor of Women, Poverty and AIDS, The Global Impact of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis, and Global Health in Times of Violence.
Farmer, along with other medical anthropologists and epidemiologists does not minimize the seriousness of Ebola, but he talks clearly about what needs to be done, cuts through the fearmongering around this current crisis, and discusses how we need to approach public health as a global system.
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