Paul Farmer Challenges Dukies to Consider Health and Human Rights

by Marsha Green

Paul Farmer is considered by many to be a visionary leader, but he holds firmly to the belief that it is not leaders that change the world, but people.  Speaking about health and human rights to a full house at Page Auditorium, Farmer said “The technocrats and their plans are important, but [these movements] won’t succeed without the citizenry behind them … to fight for the rights of everyone.”

Farmer is a Duke alumni and the founder of Partners in Health, a non-profit organization that works to reduce health disparities in nine resource-poor countries. He was at Duke to give the inaugural Global Health Lecture, co-sponsored by the Duke School of Nursing’s Office of Global and Community Health Initiatives and the Duke Global Health Institute.