When Healing Refused to Stay Comfortable

In 1987, a twenty-seven-year-old Harvard medical student named Paul Farmer stood in Cange, a remote village in Haiti's Central Plateau, and made a decision that would define his life. Surrounded by patients suffering from tuberculosis, malaria, and malnutrition — diseases that were treatable everywhere except where people couldn't pay — Farmer refused to simply document their suffering. With Ophelia Dahl and a small group of colleagues, he founded Partners in Health, known locally as Zanmi Lasante, and began building a clinic where none existed.…