Global Pulse Blog

Hello GP readers,

As several of your dedicated editor team are currently attending AMSA’s national convention (this year’s theme: Win Back Our Profession, Arlington VA and Washington DC, March 12-15), we will try to post a few “live” (*where “live” means “adjusted for inadequate wireless access”) highlights and thoughts.  The convention kicked off today, with Dr. Paul Farmer delivering the keynote address.  Word on the street has it that videos of the speech will be available eventually; for now, all I can offer is my notes:

• On promoting global health in a world of limited international resources: The medical standard of care is something that doesn’t change based on where you as a doctor are. However, too often we apply geographic and administrative boundaries to determine who gets the standard of care and who does not.  “I do not mean to suggest that we de-link ourselves from sober economic considerations, but to say that our profession is committed to bringing a standard of care to wherever the need is.”
• On the argument for “appropriate” treatment for poor patients and the limitations of the traditional, profession-oriented medical ethics reasoning: when you are a doctor in a developing country seeing a child with cancer, the real question is not which specialist is best qualified to treat the cancer, but that there exists no structure for the prevention or access to treatment for this child.  The disturbing fact is that those who seem most bothered by the existence of immense health inequalities are not the heads of medical departments or medical administration; it is the students, who need to keep their ideals alive until they rise to the positions of professors and leaders.  To keep our commitment alive, Paul suggested that through the clinical and residency years, we make it a “point of discipline” to budget 5 hours a week for advocacy on the issues of reforming our profession in accordance with our ideals.
• On student activism: Remember that Partners In Health started as student activism.  Now it does lifesaving work for the poor through 32 public-sector institutions in 10 countries.  The things we do and say now can have ripple effects literally heard around the world.
• On Global AIDS in the Age of Obama: the problem is not, as some suggest, that there is too much money going to vertical programs on AIDS alone — “The problem is not that too much money is going into AIDS. Too little is going into poor people’s health around the world. Love, AMSA.”
• On making fun of a certain West-Coast institution: “This is probably going to end up on some blog.”