Philanthrocapitalism_ How Giving Can Save the World - Matthew Bishop [16]
In 2006, I went to Rwanda to see how things were going. Partners In Health had already completed the restoration of Rwinkwavu Hospital. Closed since the genocide, it now has an infectious disease unit, an operating room, an X-ray facility, a center for malnourished children, electronic medical records, and Internet access. Partners also had begun treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV and worked with the Rwandan government to ensure widespread distribution of medicine to people with AIDS. It has enrolled more than 1,700 patients in its rural care model; trained over eight hundred health-care workers to treat people who can’t come to the hospital or don’t need to do so now; and opened five clinics in rural villages with electricity from photovoltaic cells provided by another wonderful NGO, the Solar Electric Light Fund. Together with the government of Rwanda’s ministry of health, Partners In Health is renovating another hospital to serve 300,000 people and opening a center to train Rwandan health workers to provide high-quality primary care and treatment for HIV, TB, and malaria in rural areas. Partners In Health will also provide pediatric medicine to children with AIDS, and launch clean water and sustainable development projects essential to public health. If the Partners In Health’s efforts are as successful in Rwanda as they have been in Haiti, there will be a model that can be implemented in every developing nation in Africa and across the world to narrow the unconscionable health divide between the world’s poor and the rest of us.
I asked Paul why, after all the economic insecurity of his childhood, he wasn’t content to give two or three weeks a year to caring for the poor and spend the rest of his time enjoying the financial and other rewards his skills and ability could bring. He told me that even though he grew up living in a bus with seven other people, his parents were still concerned about and generous to those with even less. Then when he moved from his bus to Duke University, he realized that he and other young Americans, no matter what their income, had great opportunities. But when he went to Haiti, he saw people living in conditions that made his bus look like a palace. Even worse, they didn’t “feel they could make things better: I wanted them to know the floor in the hospital didn’t have to be dirty; the women didn’t have to die in childbirth. Haiti was my greatest teacher. After going there, I couldn’t do anything else.”
I have told Farmer’s story at some length to demonstrate the incredible impact one person with a fine mind, boundless energy, and a passion for justice can have. When I first heard of Paul, I asked my daughter, who has a long-standing interest in global health issues, if she knew anything about him. She said, “Oh, Dad, he’s a saint. He’s our generation’s Albert Schweitzer.” Paul Farmer is not yet fifty. I hope to live to see him get the Nobel Prize and—more important—to inspire other bright selfless young men and women to follow in his footsteps.
THE PAUL FARMER model of giving time, like the Gates model of giving money, isn’t for everyone. Most people either don’t want to devote their entire lives to a particular cause or have obligations that prevent them from doing so. But just as is the case with money, many people do want to give time to causes that are important to them.
When I recovered from my heart surgery, I wanted to do something to help others avoid the same fate or worse. In May 2005, working with the American Heart Association, my foundation launched the Alliance for a Healthier Generation to halt the alarming rise of childhood obesity by 2010, then reverse it. Increasingly, childhood obesity, with all its