Mountains Beyond Mountains

Dr. Paul Farmer

Recently I finished the book Mountains Beyond Mountains, written by Tracy Kidder. The book follows Dr. Paul Farmer, an infectious disease specialist who truly cares about every human beings welfare and has devoted his life to making healthcare available to those who do not have it. The book is touching and thought provoking and will leave you with a sense of uneasiness that comes with the knowledge that so many people suffer unnecessarily in the world and wonder at the ultimate kindness of the people that are trying to stop the tide of suffering. It would have been easy to portray Dr. Farmer as someone who is beyond human, but Kidder does an excellent job at keeping Farmer both real in your mind and showing the amazing things he has done. With that juxtaposition the acts seem both closer so that the reader can help as well, but they keep their mythic appeal because they are, in reality, fantastic. Dr. Farmer is not only a doctor, he and his organization Partners in Health have developed an organization that not only provides healthcare but fights for the rights of the poor locally and globally, and attempts to provide every opportunity they can for those they encounter. I am interested in medicine and public health so that aspect of the book was interesting to me but I think that the other themes are prevalent enough for anyone to enjoy the read.

An issue throughout the book that Dr. Farmer fights with is the issue of "cost-efficacy" of healthcare. When dealing with a small amount of funds and a large amount of sick people, what are you supposed to do? Throughout the book Farmer takes the stand that no one should be turned away because medicine that can cure them is too expensive. I wish that this could always be the case but this issue is very important currently because that is not always possible. It is abhorrent that medical care that can save someones life must be denied because that money could save others more cheaply. I think though that although it is not a happy subject it deserves at least some thought because closing our eyes and pretending it doesn't exist will not make the problem of inefficient funds for healthcare go away. PRI's the World did a thoughtful series on the subject a few weeks back, where they examined both sides of the argument, and I think it is worth listening to. I think it may be one argument that does not have a right answer. The thought you should come out of Mountains Beyond Mountains thinking (or at least the one I did) is that the fact that rationing healthcare does happen, and may be necessary in certain situations today, but that as human beings we should do what we can to make it so that it is not necessary. To work towards the same ends as Dr. Paul Farmer and make it so that no one dies from a curable cause because their cure was too expensive.