Further to the announcement of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the launch of the initiative for the elimination of cholera in Haiti on 11 December 2012, the Secretary-General has appointed Dr. Paul Farmer (USA) as his Special Advisor for Community Based Medicine and Lessons From Haiti.   

As Special Advisor, Dr. Farmer will work closely with all key partners to help galvanise support for the elimination of cholera in Haiti.  He will also use the data gathered from the Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti to advise on lessons learned and how those can be applied in Haiti and other settings.   

Dr. Farmer brings a wealth of experience to the new appointment, including from his work at Harvard University where he is the Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, and Chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.  In 2010, Dr. Farmer was awarded Harvard’s highest distinction for his pioneering humanitarianism and scholarship.  He is a founding director of Partners In Health, an international non-profit organization that provides direct health care services and undertakes research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty.  He has pioneered novel community-based treatment strategies that successfully show that quality health care can be delivered in resource-poor settings.
 
Dr. Farmer has also served as Deputy Special Envoy for Haiti from 2009 to 2012.  In that capacity, he supported Special Envoy Clinton and the people of Haiti in the implementing the Government of Haiti’s priorities for the recovery effort. Dr. Farmer, who is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and was recently elected as member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Farmer was educated in the United States at Duke University and Harvard Medical School, holding an M.D. and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Born in 1959, he is married and has three children.