You can't have public health without a public health system. We just don't want to be part of a mindless competition for resources. We want to build back capacity in the system.
Interpretation
A functioning public health system is essential for overall public health.
This quote emphasizes the importance of a robust public health system as a fundamental requirement for ensuring public health. Paul Farmer advocates for collaboration and capacity building rather than competing for finite resources, highlighting that true health improvements come from well-structured systems that can serve the community effectively.
In practice
At a public health conference, this quote could illustrate the need for systemic improvements in health care.
If any country was a mine-shaft canary for the reintroduction of cholera, it was Haiti - and we knew it. And in retrospect, more should have been done to prepare for cholera... which can spread like wildfire in Haiti... This was a big rebuke to all of us working in public health and health care in Haiti.
I recommend the same therapies for all humans with HIV. There is no reason to believe that physiologic responses to therapy will vary across lines of class, culture, race or nationality.
With rare exceptions, all of your most important achievements on this planet will come from working with others- or, in a word, partnership.
It is clear that the pharmaceutical industry is not, by any stretch of the imagination, doing enough to ensure that the poor have access to adequate medical care.
The poorest parts of the world are by and large the places in which one can best view the worst of medicine and not because doctors in these countries have different ideas about what constitutes modern medicine. It's the system and its limitations that are to blame.
There is nothing wrong with underlining personal agency, but there is something unfair about using personal responsibility as a basis for assigning blame while simultaneously denying those who are being blamed the opportunity to exert agency in their lives
Taking care of your body, no matter what your age, is an investment.
The body of man has in itself blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile; these make up the nature of this body, and through these he feels pain or enjoys health. Now he enjoys the most perfect health when these elements are duly proportioned to one another in respect of compounding, power and bulk, and when they are perfectly mingled.
Ill-health, of body or of mind, is defeat. Health alone is victory. Let all men, if they can manage it, contrive to be healthy!
Surgeon generals are appointed by presidents, but our work isn't about politics. Our highest duty to to the public. Our true guide is science. Our job is to speak the truth about public health, even when it's controversial or perceived as political.
If you take care of your body, it'll take care of you.
Nothing is more valuable to people than health care, and by paying, they feel less like beggars and more like 'customers' who can and should demand quality care.
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