Infections and Inequalities

Physician and anthropologist Paul Farmer, who fought AIDS in rural Haiti and drug-resistant tuberculosis in Peru's slums, argues that modern epidemics fall hardest on the poor. Drawing on more than fifteen years in the field, and on a working life split between Harvard's teaching hospitals and a clinic on Haiti's Central Plateau, he traces the inequality that runs through AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and typhoid and that feeds emerging diseases such as Ebola and cholera. Farmer challenges the standard methods of epidemiology and international health, arguing that explanations built on cost-effectiveness or patient noncompliance end up blaming the victims, when larger global and local forces decide who falls ill. He also sets out what determined doctors can still achieve.

Bill Gates, who put it among 11 science books everyone should read, said Farmer makes plain the huge gap between the health of rich and poor people.