Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains: the Quest of Dr. Paul farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World (Random House, 2003); Paul Farmer, The Uses of Haiti (Common Courage Press, 1994); Paul Farmer, Haiti After the Earthquake (Public Affairs, 2011); Peter Hallward, Damming the Flood: Haiti and the Politics of Containment (Verso, 2007); Amy Wilentz, The Rainy Season: Haiti- Then and Now (Simon and Schuster, 2011); Herbert Gold, The Best Nightmare on Earth: A Life in Haiti (Simon and Schuster, 1991); Bob Braun, “Maplewood doctor volunteers at Haiti’s largest hospital after devastating earthquake,” New Jersey Star-Ledger, July 20. 2010; Sanjay Gupta, “Deadly Cholera Spreading in Haiti,” CNN Transcripts, October 30, 2010; Jan Urbina, “Haiti Hospital’s Fight Against TB Falls to One Man,” New York Times, February 6, 2010.
Dr. Richard Steven Street is an academically-trained historian who photographs contemporary events in an effort to reach the widest possible audience. He tries to cut across the truncations of knowledge that artificially separate scholars from the general public. Street taught Liberation Photography in the James Weldon Johnson Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Emory University; he is presently at the Tanner Humanities Center, University of Utah. In fall 2013 he will become the Anschutz Distinguished Professor, Princeton University. He shot the essay with a protective mask. All patients or their relatives granted permission to be photographed. Dr. Street published this essay at socialdocumentary after all of the editors that he contacted at the the New York Times magazine replied to his query with "out of the office" messages.
To license this work for editorial, creative, or other uses, click on the OZMO logo above.
This will take you to the Ozmo website where you can review the cost and license for the photographs in this exhibit.
You will need to create an account with both Amazon payments and with the Ozmo website as described on the Ozmo website.
Dr. Megan coffee’s Twitter account DokteCoffee and www.doctorcoffee.org
The following physicians, nurseses, and volunteers havew contributed to the success of the clinic:
Dr. Monica Gandhi Monica.Gandhi@ucsf.edu
(University of California, San Francisco for TB, HIV)
Jody Weschler docdad8@aol.com
(Clinic supplies)
Jeanne Vodicka and Ben Pritchard
(Clinic nurses)
Dr. Jen Halverson
(Clinic supplies and medical help)
UMCOR
(United Methodists)
Sister Mary Finnick
mfinnick5@aol.com
Graham Huff, David Holmes
(Website)
Alain Vallaincourt
(Logistics)
Grassroots United
(Housing, storage)
Neal Sidhwaney
(Computers) .
TB in Haiti and around the world
TB is eminently treatable and patients are almost always cured. It has all but disappeared from the rich nations but still plagues parts of the so-called Developing World to an extent that most Americans and Europeans would find astonishing. Today, TB kills around two million people, more adults than any other single infectious disease other than AIDS. It shares what Dr. Paul Farmer calls “a noxious synergy” with AIDS. An active case of AIDS often leads to a latent case of TB, and vice versa. In poor countries, TB is the most common proximate cause of death among people who died of AIDS. But because TB mainly infects the poor populations of developing nations, industrialized countries and pharmaceutical companies had for years lagged behind in their development of new technologies. There is no vaccine. Most TB drugs and diagnostic tools were developed a quarter-century ago.
TB vividly illustrates the massive gap between rich and poor. Improperly treated, or untreated, TB is a dreadful, deadly disease that eats away at lungs and often other organs of the body, including bones. About two billion people – roughly one third of the world’s population – have TB bacilli in their bodies. Most Haitians are infected with TB. Usually the disease remains latent. Only about 10 percent develop full blown TB. But the chance of becoming ill massively increases among poor people afflicted with malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS in a country where public health had massively deteriorated under years of military rule.
Tuberculosis spreads easily. It feeds on the lungs and spreads through sneezes and coughs. Those who live in crowded tent cities, in peasant huts and urban slums, in shantytowns and prisons and homeless shelters, all have a good chance of inhaling the bacilli and developing infections that expand into an active disease, and on occasion receiving inadequate treatment that transforms their TB into MDR (multiple drug resistant), a scary form of the disease. MDR TB first appeared in Haiti during the years of junta rule, when therapy was interrupted by strikes, floods, violence, and abrupt closing of therapy, and it became impossible to even get the required medicines into the country. TB kills more adult Haitians than any other disease
Unable to load Flash content. The YUI Charts Control requires Flash Player 9.0.45 or higher. You can download the latest version of Flash Player from the
Adobe Flash Player Download Center.
Make Comment/View Comments
