Paul Farmer, an American doctor and medical anthropologist famend for his modern work in offering well being care to poorer nations, died Monday at age 62, his nonprofit group Companions in Well being stated.
The Boston-based group stated he "unexpectedly handed away at this time in his sleep whereas in Rwanda."
"Paul Farmer's loss is devastating, however his imaginative and prescient for the world will dwell on by way of Companions in Well being," the group's CEO Dr. Sheila Davis stated in a assertion. "Paul taught all these round him the facility of accompaniment, love for each other, and solidarity."
Farmer's work on offering well being care options to poorer nations introduced him broad acclaim. A 2003 e book profiling him, "Mountains Past Mountains," referred to as him "the person who would treatment the world."
Tributes to Farmer's legacy poured in on social media from world wide.
Samantha Energy, the previous U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, tweeted that Farmer was "an enormous" in his area.
"Devastating information," she posted. "Paul Farmer gave the whole lot — the whole lot — to others. He noticed the worst, and but did all he might to deliver out the perfect in everybody he encountered."
"It's onerous to overstate the affect Dr. Paul Farmer had on the medical occupation," pulmonologist and medical analyst Dr. Vin Gupta tweeted
"That is past devastating. Paul was a hero, a mentor and a good friend," Brown College's Dr. Ashish Ok. Jha tweeted. "He taught us what world well being ought to be and impressed all of us to do higher."
And actor Edward Norton, a social and environmental activist, referred to as Farmer "one of the loving, humorous, beneficiant & inspiring folks to grace humanity together with his soul in our lifetimes."
Working in Haiti in 1987, Farmer co-founded Companions in Well being to assist devise and ship higher well being care in poor and badly underserved nations.
A co-founder and shut longtime affiliate was Jim Yong Kim, who went on to steer the World Financial institution from 2012 to 2019. In 2009, Farmer succeeded Kim as chair of the Division of International Well being and Social Drugs at Harvard Medical Faculty. The identical 12 months he was named a UN deputy particular envoy to Haiti, working with Invoice Clinton.
Farmer held that place on the time of the island's devastating 2010 earthquake, and shortly was headed to Haiti on an airplane stuffed with physicians.
Farmer, a lifelong advocate for the poor Caribbean nation, co-founded the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and labored with native leaders to open a trendy educating hospital in Mirebalais, in central Haiti, in 2013.
He talked with CBS Information chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook concerning the venture in 2012, when the hospital was nonetheless underneath development.
"We would like to have the ability to say, simply as soon as, that the standard of care we're giving to folks residing in abject poverty is nearly as good as in the event that they have been born in some ritzy a part of Manhattan, say. That imaginative and prescient of fairness and justice and decency is what we would like to provide beginning to," Farmer stated.
"What a crushing loss," LaPook stated Monday.
Farmer was editor in chief of the journal Well being and Human Rights, and wrote extensively on the juncture of these two fields.
Farmer was additionally chief of the division of International Well being Fairness at Brigham and Girls's Hospital, in Boston, Massachusetts.
He, Kim and one other Companions in Well being co-founder, Ophelia Dahl — daughter of British author Roald Dahl and American actress Patricia Neal — are featured in a 2017 documentary, "Bending the Arc."
Along with Rwanda and Haiti, Companions in Well being works in Kazakhstan, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mexico, Peru, Russia and Sierra Leone, in addition to in Navajo communities in the USA.
Farmer was married to Didi Bertrand Farmer, a Haitian medical anthropologist.
In 2008, Farmer invited "60 Minutes" to central Haiti, the place he found his life's work. The invitation meant a three-hour, jaw clenching, tooth rattling experience on an unpaved highway from the capital metropolis to the hospital. Watch the video beneath: