I came across an article in the American Anthropologist Journal about medical anthropologist Paul Farmer. His life story is inspiring and pushes everyone to start thinking about how they can help others. Paul Farmer believed medicine had to start with people’s lives. Born in 1959, he grew up in unusual places like a converted school bus and a houseboat in Florida. He went to Duke University, where a medical anthropology class changed how he viewed medicine. Instead of studying science only in a lab, Farmer wanted to understand how history, politics, and culture shaped people’s health.
In the 1980s, he worked in rural clinics in Haiti, where malnutrition and preventable diseases were part of daily life. Rather than just observing, he built partnerships with local leaders such as Father Fritz Lafontant and the people of Cange. Together they founded Partners In Health (PIH), which became a global network proving that tuberculosis and HIV could be treated among the poor. Farmer called this approach a “preferential option for the poor.” It meant hiring and training local health workers who visited patients at home, brought medicine, and made sure basic needs like food and housing weren’t ignored.
Farmer was never afraid to call out injustice. At Harvard Medical School, he realized there were excess medical supplies in Boston hospitals while his patients in Haiti went without the basics. He called the deaths he witnessed “stupid deaths,” meaning deaths caused by diseases that were preventable and treatable. His books such as Pathologies of Power and Infections and Inequalities explained this as structural violence, showing how poverty and racism quietly but powerfully harm poor and vulnerable people.
Even as PIH expanded to countries like Peru and Rwanda, Farmer stayed close to his patients. In Boston, he treated the homeless, and in Africa, he helped fight the Ebola epidemic when many global health authorities had given up. Farmer believed that solidarity meant showing up everyday. He once said, “You just don’t leave.” That commitment inspired a generation of students and doctors to think differently about health as a human right.
Farmer was also known for his generosity and humility. He often gave away his possessions, even borrowing money just to hand it to someone else in need. Before an important meeting, he once fixed his only suit with a black marker. He cooked meals for family and took time to listen to everyone he met. After his lectures, he would stay for hours to answer questions from students and strangers.
When he died in Rwanda in 2022, Farmer was still doing what he had always loved: visiting patients, mentoring young doctors, and sharing jokes in the hospital wards. His gravestone reads, “Paul Farmer—Was of Use.” For the communities he served, that is more than true.
