Even the pandemic hasn’t made public-health icon Paul Farmer lose hope

“AM I ALLOWED TO BE A NORMAL HUMAN AND say, ‘How are you?’” asks Dr. Paul Farmer as soon as our Zoom call connects.

It’s an apt introduction for a man who became a living legend in the global health world mostly by being a normal human who does extraordinary things—starting with co-founding the Boston-based nonprofit organization Partners in Health (PIH) in 1987, before graduating from Harvard Medical School. Since then, PIH and its global staff of 18,000 have helped strengthen health systems in the “clinical deserts” of Haiti, Rwanda, Peru, Russia and numerous other countries. PIH’s work in these places is guided by a simple, albeit difficult to implement, principle: namely, that all humans are equal