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.
Interpretation
The same treatment methods should be applied universally to all individuals with HIV, regardless of their background.
In this quote, Paul Farmer emphasizes the importance of equal access to healthcare and the universal applicability of medical therapies for people living with HIV. He argues that physiological responses to treatment are consistent among all human beings, and therefore, no disparities based on class, culture, race, or nationality should exist when it comes to healthcare and treatment options.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech advocating for global health equality.
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.
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
Since I do not believe that there should be different recommendations for people living in the Bronx and people living in Manhattan, I am uncomfortable making different recommendations for my patients in Boston and in Haiti.
It should be forbidden and severely punished to remove cancer by cutting, burning, cautery, and other fiendish tortures. It is from nature that the disease comes, and from nature comes the cure, not from physicians.
We should resolve now that the health of this nation is a national concern; that financial barriers in the way of attaining health shall be removed; that the health of all it's citizens deserves the help of all the nation.
I think that if we want to create a healthier country, we need to empower more people to make changes in their lives. But we also have to empower them to help change their environment.
Exercise for the joy of feeling good and getting better. Eat right with the intention of fueling your body with the things it needs to perform.
You can have the best vaccines for a woman or her child, but if you can't get her to come and get them then they won't work.
We cannot step aside and say that we have achieved our goal by inventing a new drug or a new way by which to treat presently incurable diseases, a new way to help those who suffer from malnutrition, or the creation of ideal balanced diets on a worldwide scale. We cannot rest till the way has been found, with our help, to bring our finest achievement to everyone.
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