RIP Dr. Paul Farmer

Today, we learned of the passing of Dr. Paul Farmer, and now we live in a different world.

Paul Farmer was a global health leader who taught us about equity in public health and why EVERY SINGLE life is worth saving.

Dr. Farmer was a medical doctor who co-founded Partners in Health (PIH) in 1987. If you haven’t heard of Partners in Health, it’s an incredible global health organization tackling many of the hardest problems in the world. It’s never steered away from a challenge, like trying to cure people in Peru with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis or providing health care in the most rural of settings through community health workers, a type of care PIH has largely pioneered.

Today, PIH still works around the world here at home in the US and around the world in hard to reach locations. PIH has even brought its community care models home to the US to help with the COVID-19 fight.

Dr. Farmer has always been a guiding post of a change maker I’ve wanted to emulate. I even had the chance to meet him at a screening for Bending the Arc!

While I’m not anywhere near the adventurer he was, I’d like to think that much of the work we do at Ocelot Market is helping uplift communities around the world by providing fair work, allowing people to choose their future and afford care.

In many of the locations we source our products, workers and communities face public health challenges that are hard to even comprehend in our Western world. Providing fair work offers predictability and a financial cushion to a person’s life where they can save, and afford to educate their children and to take care of themselves.

Thank you for being a part of our work. Rest in Peace Dr. Paul Farmer. I hope your legacy inspires creative problem solving that would make you proud and inspires true respect for every single life on this earth.

Please watch Bending the Arc on Netflix about the journey starting PIH and read some of Dr. Farmer’s works. I promise they'll change your life.