Partners In Health is in Malawi!

I first heard about Partners in Health when I was doing research on extreme poverty about a year ago. I was watching a slide show about the Millennium Development Goals: How to Change the World by 2015.

I have a link to it on this blog if you're at all interested (The Plan to End Extreme Poverty). The presentation was put on by The Earth Institute at Columbia University, which is directed by Jeffrey Sachs.

Anyway, when you get to "Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases", you'll see this picture (courtesy Partners in Health). I have carried it in my head for more than a year now.

It changed everything for me. In an instant, my perspective shifted from woe and hopelessness (so sad that this is happening. Too bad there is nothing I can do about it) to a sense of urgency -- Are you kidding me? That's the same guy?! All he needed was ARVs (meds)?!

The "before" guy can't work the fields or provide for his family, but how about the "after" guy? If we get pills to the before guy, we won't have to spend as much on the AIDs orphans. Because there won't be any!

And yes, I think we need to do more to educate and prevent against AIDs and other diseases, but we have to stop the bleeding first. The only reason that people stopped dying in droves in America from HIV/AIDs is because they got medicine.

So anyway, I am delighted to report that Partners in Health recently launched a new project in Nemo, an impoverished rural area in Malawi.

The government and Ministry of Health invited PIH based on its success and track record in rebuilding the public health infrastructure in Haiti, Peru, Cuba, Russia and Rwanda.

I'm reading the Tracy Kidder, Pulizer Prize winning book, "Mountains Beyond Mountains." It's the story of Dr. Paul Farmer, Founding Director of Partners In Health.

It talks about how he grew up a poor boy in Birmingham, Alabama -- like really poor; they lived in a bus -- and went on to kick ass at Harvard Medical School, all the time while working hands-on to provide care to the poorest of the poor in Haiti.

He was a total renegade. Steal from the rich (like meds out of the cabinet at the lab in Boston) to treat the poor. And he was smart. He has all these novel and unorthodox views about human rights (like, we all have them regardless of our social status) and just kept pushing and pushing till he got noticed. In reading this book, it's clear to me that changing the world is so damn frustrating! As Tracy Kidder explained in an interview, where most NGOs give up and ultimately blame the very people they've come to help, Paul Farmer and PIH never did that. They stayed. They asked themselves questions about what they were doing wrong. They developed relationships with the people (the public/cultures) they were treating to understand what social and cultural barriers they needed to integrate into their approach. They never wavered from their mission.

The back cover of this book says it's Paul Farmer's life calling to cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most.

It's sorta how I articulated my own calling, "to raise (insert amount here: $101K) for the people who need it most."

I hate fundraising and I am actually pretty bad at it. But, I've been put in a very privileged situation, surrounded by positive, big-thinking and successful people. I have to think there is a reason for that. I believe that building awareness within my communities (and fundraising where I can) is what I am meant to do right now.

I know all too well that I am not the smartest, most articulate, creative, caring, thoughtful or charismatic kid on the block. But I've got a big heart, and that's my gift.

Silly to have it go to waste.

Anyway, thanks for the inspiration Paul Farmer!