Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues

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 show more 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. show less

If you are poor in Harlem, you are more likely to die of AIDS or tuberculosis just like poor people in Haiti or India. This book explores the effect that income and access to health care has on individuals' mortality and morbidity. Surprisingly, income, rather than geography, appears to play the significant role. Put another way, you are more likely to be sick and poor than sick and rich, and the diseases that kill the rich are very different than the diseases that kill the poor.

Fantastic.