Join Porter Square books for a virtual talk with Dr. Paul Farmer about his "bold, humane and rigorously researched" (San Fransisco Chronicle) newest book, Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History. Dr. Farmer will be joined in conversation by Partners in Health co-founder Ophelia Dahl. This event is free and open to all, hosted on Crowdcast.

"[The] history is as powerfully conveyed as it is tragic . . . Illuminating . . . Invaluable." —Steven Johnson, The New York Times Book Review

In 2014, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea suffered the worst epidemic of Ebola in history. The brutal virus spread rapidly through a clinical desert where basic health-care facilities were few and far between. Causing severe loss of life and economic disruption, the Ebola crisis was a major tragedy of modern medicine. But why did it happen, and what can we learn from it?

Paul Farmer, the internationally renowned doctor and anthropologist, experienced the Ebola outbreak firsthand—Partners in Health, the organization he founded, was among the international responders. In Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds, he offers the first substantive account of this frightening, fast-moving episode and its implications. In vibrant prose, Farmer tells the harrowing stories of Ebola victims while showing why the medical response was slow and insufficient. Rebutting misleading claims about the origins of Ebola and why it spread so rapidly, he traces West Africa’s chronic health failures back to centuries of exploitation and injustice. Under formal colonial rule, disease containment was a priority but care was not – and the region’s health care woes worsened, with devastating consequences that Farmer traces up to the present.

This thorough and hopeful narrative is a definitive work of reportage, history, and advocacy, and a crucial intervention in public-health discussions around the world.

Medical anthropologist and physician Dr. Paul Farmer (MD, PhD) has dedicated his life to improving health care for the world’s poorest people. He is Co-founder and Chief Strategist of Partners In Health (PIH), an international non-profit organization that since 1987 has provided direct health care services and undertaken research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty. Dr. Farmer and his colleagues in the U.S. and abroad have pioneered novel community-based treatment strategies that demonstrate the delivery of high-quality health care in resource-poor settings.

Dr. Farmer has written extensively on health, human rights, and the consequences of social inequality. He is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association, the Outstanding International Physician (Nathan Davis) Award from the American Medical Association, a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and, with his PIH colleagues, the Hilton Humanitarian Prize. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Ophelia Dahl co-founded Partners In Health (PIH), a global health non-profit dedicated to delivering high-quality care to the poor.  PIH’s history, from its origins in Haiti’s rural Central Plateau, where Ms. Dahl met PIH co-founder Paul Farmer over thirty years ago, through its expansion to ten countries on four continents and a global movement for the human right to health, was recently captured in the feature-length documentary “Bending the Arc.” Ms. Dahl led PIH as Executive Director for 16 years, and now chairs its Board of Directors. She continues to write, teach, and speak about the health and rights of the poor, moral imagination, and accompaniment. Ms. Dahl is a recipient of the Union Theological Seminary’s Union Medal and, together with her PIH colleagues, the Hilton Humanitarian prize. She lives in Cambridge with her family.

Paul Farmer with Ophelia Dahl: Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds