Product Description

Paul Farmer has battled AIDS in rural Haiti and deadly strains of drug-resistant tuberculosis in the slums of Peru. A physician-anthropologist with more than fifteen years in the field, Farmer writes from the front lines of the war against these modern plagues and shows why, even more than those of history, they target the poor. This 'peculiarly modern inequality' that permeates AIDS, TB, malaria, and typhoid in the modern world, and that feeds emerging (or re-emerging) infectious diseases such as Ebola and cholera, is laid bare in Farmer's harrowing stories of sickness and suffering. Challenging the accepted methodologies of epidemiology and international health, he points out that most current explanatory strategies, from 'cost-effectiveness' to patient 'noncompliance,' inevitably lead to blaming the victims. In reality, larger forces, global as well as local, determine why some people are sick and others are shielded from risk. Yet this moving account is far from a hopeless inventory of insoluble problems. Farmer writes of what can be done in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds, by physicians determined to treat those in need. "Infections and Inequalities" weds meticulous scholarship with a passion for solutions - remedies for the plagues of the poor and the social maladies that have sustained them.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #97321 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 419 pages

Review
"The only things that distinguish Farmer's account from a Dostoevskian novel is a meed of hard, effective science and a depressingly familiar story of the powerfully malignant of racism.... It is hard to think of more compelling examples to underpin his arguments. It makes the book and its message accessible to the general reader and forcefully reminds doctors, nurses, scientists, sociologists, economists and aid workers of their unfinished business.... But the main lessons he draws are for us all. We must do all we can to diminish social inequality." - Hugh Pennington, Times Higher Education Supplement "A strangely uplifting read. Infections and Inequalities is a powerful and rigorously argued critique of economic and health care inequality." - Phil Whitaker, The Guardian (UK) "Bolstered by thorough knowledge of the countries in which he practiced, relevant and cogent case histories, and a caring but disciplined attitude, Farmer powerfully argues for substantial changes in epidemiological theory and practice. He raises thought-provoking and necessary questions, and he provides answers that, if often unsettling, are pertinent and capable of being put to use by individuals and governments truly interested in solving, not sidestepping, life-threatening situations." - William Beatty, Booklist"

About the Author
Paul Farmer directs the Program in Infectious Disease and Social Change at Harvard Medical School and divides his clinical time between Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Clinique Bon Sauveur in central Haiti. He is the author of AIDS and Accusation (California, 1992), which was awarded the Wellcome Medal, and The Uses of Haiti (1994), and editor of Women, Poverty and AIDS (1996), which won the Eileen Basker Prize.

Customer Reviews

HIV and TB infection and its relationships with poverty.
This work focuses on HIV and tuberculosis infection through the lenses of both anthropology and medical practice. Farmer, qualified in both, examines the impact of these infectious diseases particularly in Haiti, but also in the United States and South America. The author particularly examines the relationships between increasing global inequality and infection. Drawing on case studies of his patients, what is particularly interesting is his distinction between "culture" and "structural violence", and he argues that the two have often been conflated. Structural violence is the means by which people are disenfranchised and have extremely limited life choices by virtue of colour, nationality, wealth and gender. Thus there are powerful social forces at work, which determine one's health outcomes. The author demonstrates how both TB and HIV are diseases of poverty, and explanations of their increased emergence in the world - such as culture (voodoo, reliance on herbal remedies), patient non-compliance and so on - are in fact the result of inequality, poverty and inaction on the part of the powerful world.

This work examines the lives and case studies of people who have been so dramatically affected by the HIV and TB pandemics, and whose choices have been so restricted by their poverty and lack of access to medical care. This is an important book that places biomedical science within its social context, and asks important questions not only about the distribution of wealth in the world, but also about the distribution of health care and medical intervention in the treatment of HIV and TB. The dramatic affect of racism and unequal power relations between the genders is underlined. This is important reading for those interested in HIV or TB and its relationships to poverty and development.