12521: Doctor spreads his vision for uplift in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Sat, Jul. 13, 2002

Miami Herald

Doctor spreads his vision for uplift in Haiti
By DAVID SYLVA
dsylva@herald.com

Refusing to do a reading about ''dreary subjects,'' Haitian medical pioneer
Dr. Paul Farmer held a conversation Friday night with a packed room of
admirers and colleagues at Books & Books in Coral Gables.

A Florida native, Farmer founded the first AIDS clinics in Haiti. ''When we
started out writing grants,'' he said, ``we were told that it's not cost
effective to treat AIDS patients in rural Haiti.''

Farmer built his facility in a squatters settlement. He sought to serve a
small group, the ''poorest of the poor.'' Yet, people were soon flocking to
his clinic from all of central Haiti.

A Harvard Medical School faculty member, Farmer is an international
specialist in infectious disease treatment. Farmer arrived in Miami via
Siberia Friday afternoon. En route, he stopped to address the 14th
International AIDS Conference in Barcelona.

Farmer outlined three ways to approach poverty. First, one can follow the
development model: ''Do what the experts tell you, so your economy will
recover, and then you'll be fine.'' Yet development often hurts the poor, he
asserted. ``I lived in a village eight miles from the largest buttress dam
in the hemisphere. I work with people displaced by a transnational project,
signed in Washington.''

Alternatively, one can turn to charity. While Farmer was leery of condemning
this approach, he argued that ''charity erases history.'' According to
Farmer, the United States has constantly challenged the sovereignty of
Haiti, the only country born of a slave revolt.

Farmer championed a third approach: a social justice model. As a first step,
he advocated ending the U.S. embargo against aid to Haiti.

Much of the 70-plus crowd knew Farmer personally. His mission ''has been
funded by and large by people in this room,'' Farmer said.

Heidi Mason heard him speak as a first-year college student. Partly thanks
to his influence, she's now a third-year medical student at the University
of Miami.

''He's an amazing role model for any physician, for any humanitarian,'' she
observed. ``He's why you should be a doctor.''





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