PART V - O for the P

CHAPTER 24

Summary

In July 2000, the Gates Foundation gives Partners In Health and a cohort of other organizations $45 million to wipe out MDR-TB in Peru, virtually everything Jim Kim had asked for. The grant is intended to last five years and Jim plans to cure 80% of the patients, which will then give Peru control of the dread disease, and the world will have proof that countrywide control is possible. Farmer is pleased with the grant but frets that other people who support PIH will think the charity doesn't need their money anymore. As a result, he begins to speak to all his old allies and supporters to tell them in no uncertain terms that they are not dismissed.

The greatest problem for PIH at this point is just paying the bills since foundations tend to narrow the focus of their giving. Also, he still has the problem of obtaining money for drugs for Haiti when every potential giver insists that Haiti fails to meet sustainability criteria. That is, once the disease is under control, the patients cannot afford to pay for drugs to sustain the program. Fortunately, the Soros Foundation, Tom White, and the selling of their headquarters in Boston help sustain the program in Cange. Furthermore, Friends of Harvard Medical School and the Brigham also provide support, and Farmer persuades Harvard to give them office space in a pair of old brick buildings on Huntington Avenue. Of course, this means adding newcomers to the staff which Ophelia is expected to accommodate. On one visit to the new offices, Kidder sees a sign taped to the wall which reads, If Paul is the model, we're golden. Upon looking closer at it, he sees the word golden is on another piece of paper taped over another word which now reads, If Paul is the model, we're f*****. It's not meant to sound as harsh as it does, but merely to emphasize to all staffers that no one can be Paul Farmer, and if the poor have to wait for a lot of people like Paul to come along before they receive good health care, they are totally f*****. The same quirkiness also still remains in the new offices, such as Paul's suitcases lying open all over the floor and everyone running in various directions following his orders, what Ophelia calls.........

Notes

This chapter reinforces the realization on the part of the reader that Paul Farmer is not just an amazing man, but......

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