>From a profile on Paul Farmer, a Harvard physician who has dedicated his life to caring for AIDS patients in Haiti, that appeared in the July 3rd, 2000 New Yorker magazine:
Leaving Haiti, Farmer didn’t stare down through the airplane window at that brown and barren third of an island. "It bothers me even to look at it," he explained, glancing out. "It can’t support eight million people, and there they are. There they are, kidnapped from West Africa."
But when we descended toward Havana he gazed out the window intently, making exclamations: "Only ninety miles from Haiti, and look! Trees! Crops! It’s all so verdant. At the height of the dry season! The same ecology as Haiti’s, and look!"
An American who finds anything good to say about Cuba under Castro runs the risk of being labelled a Communist stooge, and Farmer is fond of Cuba. But not for ideological reasons. He says he distrusts all ideologies, including his own. "It’s an ‘ology,’ after all," he wrote to me once, about liberation theology. "And all ologies fail us at some point." Cuba was a great relief to me. Paved roads and old American cars, instead of litters on the 'gwo wout ia'. Cuba had food rationing and allotments of coffee adulterated with ground peas, but no starvation, no enforced malnutrition. I noticed groups of prostitutes on one main road, and housing projects in need of repair and paint, like most buildings in the city. But I still had in mind the howling slums of Port-au-Prince, and Cuba looked lovely to me. What looked loveliest to Farmer was its public-health statistics.
Many things affect a public’s health, of course—nutrition and transportation, crime and housing, pest control and sanitation, as well as medicine. In Cuba, life expectancies are among the highest in the world. Diseases endemic to Haiti, such as malaria, dengue fever, T.B., and AIDS, are rare. Cuba was training medical students gratis from all over Latin America, and exporting doctors gratis— nearly a thousand to Haiti, two en route just now to Zanmi Lasante. In the midst of the hard times that came when the Soviet Union dissolved, the government actually increased its spending on health care. By American standards, Cuban doctors lack equipment, and are very poorly paid, but they are generally well trained. At the moment, Cuba has more doctors per capita than any other country in the world—more than twice as many as the United States. "I can sleep here," Farmer said when we got to our hotel. "Everyone here has a doctor."
Farmer gave two talks at the conference, one on Haiti, the other on "the noxious synergy" between H.I.V. and T.B.—an active case of one often makes a latent case of the other active, too. He worked on a grant proposal to get anti-retroviral medicines for Cange, and at the conference met a woman who could help. She was in charge of the United Nations’ project on AIDS in the Caribbean. He lobbied her over several days. Finally, she said, "O.K., let’s make it happen." ("Can I give you a kiss?" Farmer asked. "Can I give you two?") And an old friend, Dr. Jorge Perez, arranged a private meeting between Farmer and the Secretary of Cuba’s Council of State, Dr. José Miyar Barruecos. Farmer asked him if he could send two youths from Cange to Cuban medical school. "Of course," the Secretary replied.
Again and again during our stay, Farmer marvelled at the warmth with which the Cubans received him. What did I think accounted for this?
I said I imagined they liked his connection to Harvard, his published attacks on American foreign policy in Latin America, his admiration of Cuban medicine.
I looked up and found his pale-blue eyes fixed on me. "I think it’s because of Haiti," he declared. "I think it’s because I serve the poor."