Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm not an austere person.
Equity is the only acceptable goal
That's when I feel most alive, when I'm helping people.
I mean we grew up in a TB bus and I became a TB doctor.
Again, conventional Catholicism does not much appeal to me.
I can't think of a better model for Haiti rebuilding than Rwanda.
I feel it's part of my job to make the problems of the poor compelling.
Some people talk about Haiti as being the graveyard of development projects.
The only way to do the human rights thing is to do the right thing medically.
It is very expensive to give bad medical care to poor people in a rich country.
...In a world riven by inequity, medicine could be viewed as social justice work.
I can't sleep. There's always somebody not getting treatment. I can't stand that.
What I can argue is that no one should have to die of a disease that is treatable.
I think that looking forward it's easy to imagine more constructive help for Haiti.
The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.
Everybody should be interested in access to primary and secondary education for everybody.
I'm one of six kids, and the eight of us lived for over a decade in either a bus or a boat.
The thing about rights is that in the end you can't prove what should be considered a right.
I would say that, intellectually, Catholicism had no more impact on me than did social theory.
If I am hungry, that is a material problem; if someone else is hungry, that is a spiritual problem.
I mean, everybody should have access to medical care. And, you know, it shouldn't be such a big deal.
If access to health care is considered a human right, who is considered human enough to have that right?
People call me a saint and I think, I have to work harder. Because a saint would be a great thing to be.
I critique market-based medicine not because I haven't seen its heights but because I've seen its depths.
I've been asked a lot for my view on American health care. Well, 'it would be a good idea,' to quote Gandhi.
The essence of global health equity is the idea that something so precious as health might be viewed as a right.
The model of the teaching hospital, which links research to teaching and service is what's missing in global health.
The world is full of miserable places. One way of living comfortably is not to think about them or, when you do, to send money
We want to be on the winning team, but at the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it is not worth it. So we fight the long defeat.
With rare exceptions, all of your most important achievements on this planet will come from working with others- or, in a word, partnership.
But as for activism, my parents did what they could, given the constraints, but were never involved in the causes I think of when I think of activists.
I think we will see better vaccines within the next 15 years, but I'm not a scientist and am focused on the short-term - what will happen in the interim.
You can't have public health without working with the public sector. You can't have public education without working with the public sector in education.
So I can't show you how, exactly, health care is a basic human right. But what I can argue is that no one should have to die of a disease that is treatable.
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.
One of the things we have to acknowledge is that if you look at Haiti, many billions of dollars have gone into development aid there that have not been effective.
The human rights community has focused very narrowly on political and civil rights for many decades, and with reason, but now we have to ask how can we broaden the view.
lean water and health care and school and food and tin roofs and cement floor, all of these things should constitute a set of basics that people must have as birthrights.
At the same time, it is obvious that clinicians in Haiti are faced with different, and, in fact, greater, challenges when attempting to treat complications of HIV disease.
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.
Civil and political rights are critical, but not often the real problem for the destitute sick. My patients in Haiti can now vote but they can't get medical care or clean water.
For me, an area of moral clarity is: you're in front of someone who's suffering and you have the tools at your disposal to alleviate that suffering or even eradicate it, and you act.
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.
In an age of explosive development in the realm of medical technology, it is unnerving to find that the discoveries of Salk, Sabin, and even Pasteur remain irrelevant to much of humanity.
We have to design a health delivery system by actually talking to people and asking, 'What would make this service better for you?' As soon as you start asking, you get a flood of answers.
In fact, it seems to me that making strategic alliances across national borders in order to treat HIV among the world's poor is one of the last great hopes of solidarity across a widening divide.
Anywhere you have extreme poverty and no national health insurance, no promise of health care regardless of social standing, that's where you see the sharp limitations of market-based health care.
I've been impressed, over the last 15 years, with how often the somewhat conspiratorial comments of Haitian villagers have been proven to be correct when the historical record is probed carefully.
The idea that because you're born in Haiti you could die having a child. The idea that because you're born in you know Malawi your children may go to bed hungry. We want to take some of the chance out of that.
WL’s [White Liberals] think all the world’s problems can be fixed without any cost to themselves. We don’t believe that. There’s a lot to be said for sacrifice, remorse, even pity. It’s what separates us from roaches