Eastbayri.com

PORTSMOUTH — PORTSMOUTH — He has personally treated hundreds, maybe even thousands, of patients in Haiti and Rwanda, where they often arrive malnourished and suffering from multiple illnesses.

His organization, Partners in Health (PiH), reaches the poorest people in 12 impoverished and often war-ridden nations through 49 health clinics and hospitals.

But if he could do it all again, Dr. Paul Farmer, Harvard medical school professor and founder of one of the largest international health organizations, would make one change.

He would have started volunteering in high school.

Dr. Farmer spoke to the student body at Portsmouth Abbey recently as part of the school’s Dom Luke Childs Lecture Series.

As it happened, Dr. Farmer did not volunteer until after college.

He made his first trip to Haiti to help squatters who had been displaced from their homes by the flooding of their valley caused by a hydro-electric dam.

It was 1983 and Dr. Farmer was just shy of entering his first year of medical school.

While there, he met 18-year-old Ophelia Dahl, another volunteer, who would soon become the executive director of the organization they would create together.

Twenty-eight years later, he says Haiti is still where he spends most of his time.

The lecture, “Partnering with the Poor: From Haiti to Rwanda,” focused on the theme of transformations: The transformation of a barren and flood-ridden mountainside in Haiti to, 20 years later, a lush forest. The transformation of an abandoned building on that mountainside into a fully operational hospital. The transformation of Joseph, a Haitian man who thought he was in his mid-twenties but was unsure, from a malnourished and dehydrated man suffering from AIDS and tuberculosis to a healthy, smiling man when he was discharged.

Dr. Farmer used many visuals to show students about his work and to demonstrate that, even at their age, they can make a difference.

He spoke to them about FACE AIDS, a student-run non-profit that has raised more than $2 million for the PiH Rwandan efforts.

He reminded Abbey students that they do not have to look far to help others — just on Aquidneck Island there are plenty of people in need.

“There are 1,000 ways to get involved,” he said.

They can donate money, raise money, raise awareness, volunteer locally, volunteer globally, or join a Facebook group.

As the adults of tomorrow, it will be their responsibility to help change the world’s health policies, he said; to not only treat the problems, but to stop the causes of them.

A cholera outbreak in Haiti from contaminated water, for example, has become the number one epidemic in the world in just over a year, he said. A simple thing — cholera vaccines — could stop its spread and an even simpler thing could have prevented it — clean water.

But the outbreak did occur and now PiH has bought out the world’s supply of cholera vaccinations while still trying to figure out how to pay for it.

It should not be so difficult to help those in need, he said.

He urged the students to get out and help the world’s people to the best of their abilities. Always strive to improve.

Built a hospital? Put up pictures to make it more welcoming, add a garden.

As the world’s privileged, as most Americans are, he said, it is their responsibility to help those next door and around the world who are unable to do it themselves.