In 2009 Paul Farmer, a professor at Harvard Medical School, was named as the deputy un special envoy to Haiti under Bill Clinton. Dr Farmer was married to a Haitian and had worked there for decades through Partners in Health, an ngo he co-founded that provides medical care to the poor. The un job, though, was his first diplomatic post. The position would let him bridge the divide between "praxis and policy"-between "direct service, which is what doctors are supposed to provide, and policy, which is what politicians and legislators are supposed to formulate."Five months after his appointment a huge earthquake struck, leading to Haiti's worst medical emergency. Dr Farmer arrived to work as a doctor and to help oversee the broader health-care response. He says he "struggled with [the] decision" to get involved in policy, but there is little sign of such trepidation in his book, which is a day-by-day account of his experience of the disaster, as well as a treatise on why Haiti was particularly vulnerable and how it should be rebuilt.
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