Famed founder of medical clinics for poor to speak in Honolulu

University of Hawaiʻi
Contact:
Gregg Takayama, (808) 382-3212
John A. Burns School of Medicine
Posted: Feb 9, 2007

HONOLULU - A Harvard Medical School professor who is a pioneer in providing health care to some of the poorest people on Earth will visit the University of Hawaii at Manoa for two lectures this month.

Paul Farmer, MD, PhD, helped found the international health organization Partners in Health in 1987, starting with a charity clinic in Haiti. It is now a worldwide health organization in five other countries, focusing on helping areas suffering from poverty, violence, and epidemics of disease obtain effective drugs to treat HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.

Dr. Farmer will speak on Sunday, February 18, at 3 p.m. at the UH Medical School Auditorium in Kaka‘ako on: "Community-based treatment of HIV: The Partners In Health experience in Haiti, Rwanda, and Lesotho."

He also speaks on Tuesday, February 20, at 4:15 p.m. at the UH Manoa Campus Center Ballroom on: "AIDS in 2007: Building a Health Care Movement."

Both lectures are free and open to the public.

Dr. Farmer is an infectious disease specialist and Professor of Medical Anthropology at Harvard Medical School. Farmer is the winner of a MacArthur Fellowship and the Margaret Mead Award for his contributions to public anthropology.

He is visiting Honolulu as "Pfizer/ American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation" Visiting Professor in JABSOM‘s Department of Family Medicine and Community Health.