About this item
On January 12, 2010, a major earthquake struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Hundreds of thousands of people died, and the greater part of the capital was demolished. Dr. Paul Farmer, U.N. deputy special envoy to Haiti, who had worked in the country for nearly thirty years treating infectious diseases like tuberculosis and AIDS, and former President Bill Clinton, the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, had just begun to work on an extensive development plan to improve living conditions in Haiti. Now their project was transformed into a massive international rescue and relief effort. In his own words, Farmer documents this effort, including the harrowing obstacles and the small triumphs. Despite an outpouring of aid, the challenges were astronomical. U.N. plans were crippled by Haiti’s fragile infrastructure and the death of U.
About the Author
Paul Farmer is UN's Deputy Special Envoy for Haiti and Chair of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard. He is also Professor of Anthropology at Harvard Medical School, chief of Social Medicine and Inequalities at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, and founding director of Partners In Health. Among his numerous awards and honors is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's "genius award."
