Paul Farmer, a medical anthropologist and physician who co-founded Partners in Health (PIH) to help treat some of the world’s poorest populations, passed away on February 21 in Rwanda. He was 62. 

PIH is an international non-profit organization that provides direct healthcare services to and advocacy for the world’s most impoverished communities, including Haiti and several African nations. Dr. Farmer received an honorary doctor of science from Penn in 2010 (Almanac February 23, 2010). 

Dr. Farmer began working in Haiti in 1983, establishing a small clinic there four years later. In 2009, former President Bill Clinton appointed Dr. Farmer the United Nations Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti.  Following a devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Dr. Farmer and his colleagues organized colleagues to attend to its victims and the World Health Organization named PIH the primary coordinator of the University Hospital in Port-au-Prince. Dr. Farmer wrote several books and journal articles on health and human rights issues and held faculty positions at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. 

Dr. Farmer is survived by his wife, Didi Bertrand; their three children, Catherine, Elizabeth and Sebastian; his mother, Ginny; his brothers, James and Jeffrey; and his sisters, Katy, Jennifer and Peggy.