If you look just at the decades after 1934, you know it’s hard to point to really inspired and positive support from outside of Haiti, to Haiti, and much easier to point to either small-minded or downright mean-spirited policies.

I think that looking forward it’s easy to imagine more constructive help for Haiti.

I’ve been asked a lot for my view on American health care. Well, ‘it would be a good idea,’ to quote Gandhi.

We’ve taken on the major health problems of the poorest – tuberculosis, maternal mortality, AIDS, malaria – in four countries. We’ve scored some victories in the sense that we’ve cured or treated thousands and changed the discourse about what is possible.

The idea that because you’re born in Haiti you could die having a child. The idea that because you’re born in you know Malawi your children may go to bed hungry. We want to take some of the chance out of that.

I’ve been impressed, over the last 15 years, with how often the somewhat conspiratorial comments of Haitian villagers have been proven to be correct when the historical record is probed carefully.

In fact, it seems to me that making strategic alliances across national borders in order to treat HIV among the world’s poor is one of the last great hopes of solidarity across a widening divide.

I critique market-based medicine not because I haven’t seen its heights but because I’ve seen its depths.

I feel it’s part of my job to make the problems of the poor compelling.

I can’t sleep. There’s always somebody not getting treatment. I can’t stand that.